141 Meaningful Quotes By William Godwin That Will Lighten Up Your Life
He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
No man knows the value of innocence and integrity but he who has lost them.
The extent of our progress in the cultivation of knowledge is unlimited.
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.
There is a class of persons whose souls are essentially non-conductors to the electricity of sentiment, and whose minds seem to be filled with their own train of thinking, convictions, and purposes to the exclusion of everything else.
Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him.
In contemplation and reverie, one thought introduces another perpetually; and it is by similarity, or the hooking of one upon the other, that the process of thinking is carried on.
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.
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.
The diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and desires to have reason to applaud and love himself.
Give energy, and mental exertion will always have attraction enough.
Love conquers all difficulties, surmounts all obstacles, and effects what to any other power would be impossible.
With respect to my religious sentiments, I have the firmest assurance and tranquillity. I have faithfully endeavoured to improve the faculties and opportunities God has given me, and I am perfectly easy about the consequences.
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.
What is there so offensive to which habit has not the power to reconcile us?
Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
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.
We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.
Human depravity originates in the vices of political constitution.
The most desirable state of mankind is that which maintains general security with the smallest encroachment upon individual independence.
The evils that arise to us from the structure of the material universe are neither trivial nor few, yet the history of political society sufficiently shows that man is, of all other beings, the most formidable enemy to man.
The value of a man is in his intrinsic qualities: in that of which power cannot strip him and which adverse fortune cannot take away. That for which he is indebted to circumstances is mere trapping and tinsel.
What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child?
Man is a being of a mixed nature; and, as there is no integrity without its flaws, so is there no man so knavish but that in some things he may be trusted.
Was ever a great discovery prosecuted or an important benefit conferred upon the human race by him who was incapable of standing and thinking and feeling alone?
Great changes cannot take place in the minds of generations of men without a corresponding change in their external symbols. There must be a harmony between the inner and the outward condition of human beings, and the progress of the one must keep pace with the progress of the other.
Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire.
Harshness and unkindness are relative. The appearance of them may be the fruits of the greatest kindness.
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.
