Top 182 Quotes & Sayings by William Godwin
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English novelist William Godwin.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
Everything in the world is conducted by gradual process. This seems to be the great principle of harmony in the universe.
It is necessary for him who would endure existence with patience that he should conceive himself to be something - that he should be persuaded he is not a cipher in the muster-roll of man.
Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind.
How different a creature is man in society and man in solitude!
When the calamity we feared is already arrived, or when the expectation of it is so certain as to shut out hope, there seems to be a principle within us by which we look with misanthropic composure on the state to which we are reduced, and the heart sullenly contracts and accommodates itself to what it most abhorred.
Justice is the sum of all moral duty.
God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
Act up to the magnitude of your destiny.
As the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking.
Religion is the most important of all things: the great point of discrimination that divides the man from the brute. It is our special prerogative that we can converse with that which we cannot see and believe in that the existence of which is reported to us by none of our senses.
During my academical life, and from this time forward, I was indefatigable in my search after truth. I read all the authors of greatest repute, for and against the Trinity, original sin, and the most disputed doctrines, but I was not yet of an understanding sufficiently ripe for impartial decision, and all my inquiries terminated in Calvinism.
Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it.
The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.
Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him.
Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
Invisible things are the only realities; invisible things alone are the things that shall remain.
The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.
Self-deception is so far from impossible that it is one of the most ordinary phenomena with which we are acquainted. Nothing is more usual than for a man to impute his actions to honorable motives when it is nearly demonstrable that they flowed from some corrupt and contemptible force.
If a thing be really good, it can be shown to be such.
Woe to the man who is always busy - hurried in a turmoil of engagements, from occupation to occupation, and with no seasons interposed of recollection, contemplation and repose! Such a man must inevitably be gross and vulgar, and hard and indelicate - the sort of man with whom no generous spirit would desire to hold intercourse.
One of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished from all other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth, consists in the gift of reason.
Learning is the ally, not the adversary of genius... he who reads in a proper spirit, can scarcely read too much.
Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire.
If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.
There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
Law is made for man and not man for the law. Wherever we can be sure that the most valuable interests of a nation require that we should decide one way, that way we ought to decide.
We covet experience; we have a secret desire to learn, not from cold prohibition, but from trial, whether those things, which are not without a semblance of good, are really so ill as they are described to us.
A just and a brave man acts fearlessly and with explicitness; he does not shun, but court, the scrutiny of mankind; he lives in the face of day, and the whole world confesses the clearness of his spirit and the rectitude of his conduct.
The world is all alike. Those that seem better than their neighbours are only more artful. They mean the same thing, though they take a different road.
Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil.
But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.
Tenderness is the name for a lover's most exquisite sensation; protection is implied in his most generous and heart-thrilling impulse.
I am most peremptorily of opinion against putting children extremely forward. If they desire it themselves, I would not balk them, for I love to attend to these unsophisticated indications. But otherwise, 'festina lente' is my maxim in education.
Sympathy is one of the principles most widely rooted in our nature: we rejoice to see ourselves reflected in another; and, perversely enough, we sometimes have a secret pleasure in seeing the sin which dwells in ourselves existing under a deformed and monstrous aspect in another.
Innocence is not virtue. Virtue demands the active employment of an ardent mind in the promotion of the general good. No man can be eminently virtuous who is not accustomed to an extensive range of reflection.
Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands, and perpetuate its institutions.
What are gold and jewels and precious utensils? Mere dross and dirt. The human face and the human heart, reciprocations of kindness and love, and all the nameless sympathies of our nature - these are the only objects worth being attached to.
I know nothing worth the living for but usefulness and the service of my fellow-creatures. The only object I pursue is to increase, as far as lies in my power, the quantity of their knowledge and goodness and happiness.
Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.
It is questionless desirable in all ordinary cases, wherever positive law is established, to restrain ourselves within the letter of that law and to allow the criminal all the benefit, if benefit to him shall result, of any evasion or escape that the law shall afford him.
The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.
There is reverence that we owe to everything in human shape.
Study with desire is real activity; without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity.
He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
Love conquers all difficulties, surmounts all obstacles, and effects what to any other power would be impossible.
Extraordinary circumstances often bring along with them extraordinary strength. No man knows, till the experiment, what he is capable of effecting.
The diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and desires to have reason to applaud and love himself.
Social man regards all those by whom he is surrounded as enemies, or beings who may become such. He is ever on his guard lest his plain speaking should be willfully perverted, or should assume a meaning he never thought of, through the animosity or prejudice of the individual that hears him.
It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.
The soul of man is one of those subtle and evanescent substances that, as long as they remain still, the organ of sight does not remark; it must become agitated to become visible.
We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.
The cause of justice is the cause of humanity. Its advocates should overflow with universal good will. We should love this cause, for it conduces to the general happiness of mankind.
Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.
Hope is in some respects a thing more brilliant, more vivifying, than fruition. What we have looked forward to with eager and earnest aspiration is never in all respects equal to the picture we had formed of it. The very uncertainty enhances the enjoyment.
In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question.
No man knows the value of innocence and integrity but he who has lost them.
The true key of the universe is love.
The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.
The love of independence and dislike of unjust treatment is the source of a thousand virtues.
There must be room for the imagination to exercise its powers; we must conceive and apprehend a thousand things which we do not actually witness.
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