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" A world of derived beings, an immense, wide creation, requires an extended scale with various ranks and orders of existence. "
William Godwin
Wide
Creation
Existence
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" I am an enemy to revolutions. I abhor, both from temper and from the clearest judgment I am able to form, all violent convulsions in the affairs of men. "
William Godwin
I Am
Temper
Men
" How are the faculties of man to be best developed and his happiness secured? The state of a king is not favorable to this, nor the state of the noble and rich men of the earth. All this is artificial life, the inventions of vanity and grasping ambition, by which we have spoiled the man of nature and of pure, simple, and undistorted impulses. "
William Godwin
Man
Happiness
Life
" The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation. "
William Godwin
Any
Place
Meditation
" The extent of our progress in the cultivation of knowledge is unlimited. "
William Godwin
Unlimited
Knowledge
Our
" Soundness of understanding is connected with freedom of enquiry; consequently, opinion should, as far as public security will admit, be exempted from restraint. "
William Godwin
Opinion
Admit
Freedom
" It is one of the oldest maxims of moral prudence: Do not, by aspiring to what is impracticable, lose the opportunity of doing the good you can effect! "
William Godwin
Good
Doing
Moral
" I was brought up in great tenderness, and though my mind was proud to independence, I was never led to much independence of feeling. "
William Godwin
Mind
Independence
Great
" To diminish the cases in which the assistance of others is felt absolutely necessary is the only genuine road to independence. "
William Godwin
Road
Genuine
Independence
" We cannot do justice to the deeds of former times if we do not in some degree remove ourselves from the circumstances in which we stand and substitute those by which the real actors were surrounded. "
William Godwin
Stand
Justice
Circumstances
" Enthusiasm is always an interesting spectacle. When it expresses itself with an honest and artless eloquence, it is difficult to listen to it and not, in some degree, to catch the flame. "
William Godwin
Interesting
Enthusiasm
Flame
" What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child? "
William Godwin
More
Parent
Love
" Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it. "
William Godwin
Injustice
Government
Effect
" 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. "
William Godwin
Uncertainty
Forward
Hope
" In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question. "
William Godwin
Out
Understood
Question
" 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. "
William Godwin
Circumstances
Value
Power
" What is there so offensive to which habit has not the power to reconcile us? "
William Godwin
Habit
Reconcile
Power
" The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself. "
William Godwin
Think
Teaching
Every Man
" I am now in the full maturity of my age and vigor of my mind. Persons of various descriptions have repeatedly solicited me to turn my mind to dramatical composition. It was, indeed, the first amusement of my thoughts in my school-boy cell. "
William Godwin
Mind
Thoughts
Age
" 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. "
William Godwin
Enough
Nature
Seeing
" The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection. "
William Godwin
Ever
Act
Man
" While my mother lived, I always felt to a certain degree as if I had somebody who was my superior and who exercised a mysterious protection over me. I belonged to something - I hung to something - there is nothing that has so much reverence and religion in it as affection to parents. "
William Godwin
Mother
Religion
Parents
" The real or supposed rights of man are of two kinds, active and passive; the right in certain cases to do as we list; and the right we possess to the forbearance or assistance of other men. "
William Godwin
Right
Man
Men
" 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. "
William Godwin
Expectation
Look
Hope
" God is a being who is himself the cause of his own existence. His prerogative is to perceive before there was anything to be perceived. He is the creator of the universe; He operated upon nothing and turned it into something. "
William Godwin
Existence
Universe
Own
" I believe in this being, not because I have any proper or direct knowledge of His existence, but I am at a loss to account for the existence and arrangement of the visible universe, and, being left in the wide sea of conjecture without a clue from analogy or experience, I find the conjecture of a God easy, obvious, and irresistible. "
William Godwin
Experience
Knowledge
God
" No man knows the value of innocence and integrity but he who has lost them. "
William Godwin
Lost
Integrity
Value
" 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. "
William Godwin
Who
Strong
Me
" What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name. "
William Godwin
Life
Merit
Name
" There is nothing that human imagination can figure brilliant and enviable that human genius and skill do not aspire to realize. "
William Godwin
Genius
Nothing
Skill
" 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. "
William Godwin
Man
Sight
Soul