William Godwin Quotes

Sympathy is one of the principles most widely rooted in our nature: we rejoice to see ourselves refl...

While my mother lived, I always felt to a certain degree as if I had somebody who was my superior an...

Every boy learns more in his hours of play than in his hours of labor. In school, he lays in the mat...

The love of independence and dislike of unjust treatment is the source of a thousand virtues.

Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement a...

Without imagination, there can be no genuine ardor in any pursuit or for any acquisition, and withou...

There is nothing that human imagination can figure brilliant and enviable that human genius and skil...

Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence...

It is questionless desirable in all ordinary cases, wherever positive law is established, to restrai...

There must be room for the imagination to exercise its powers we must conceive and apprehend a thous...

I was famous in our college for calm and impassionate discussion; for one whole summer, I rose at fi...

How are the faculties of man to be best developed and his happiness secured? The state of a king is ...

Religion is among the most beautiful and most natural of all things - that religion which 'sees God ...

It is necessary for him who would endure existence with patience that he should conceive himself to ...

Love conquers all difficulties, surmounts all obstacles, and effects what to any other power would b...

He that loves reading has everything within his reach.

In the graver and more sentimental communication of man and man, the head still bears the superior s...

To diminish the cases in which the assistance of others is felt absolutely necessary is the only gen...

It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings to coincide, through any long...

Every man has a certain sphere of discretion which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed b...

There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.

Justice is the sum of all moral duty.

Superior virtue must be the fruit of superior intelligence.

I was brought up in great tenderness, and though my mind was proud to independence, I was never led ...

The most desirable state of mankind is that which maintains general security with the smallest encro...

In the two novels I have published, it was my fortune at different times, and from different persons...

If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would....

Extraordinary circumstances often bring along with them extraordinary strength. No man knows, till t...

I believe in this being, not because I have any proper or direct knowledge of His existence, but I a...

Strange that men, from age to age, should consent to hold their lives at the breath of another, mere...

if admiration were not generally deemed the exclusive property of the rich, and contempt the constan...

A book is a dead man, a sort of mummy, embowelled and embalmed, but that once had flesh, and motion,...

It has an unhappy effect upon the human understanding and temper, for a man to be compelled in his g...