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" Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it. "
William Godwin
Injustice
Government
Effect
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" My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with what is to come or what has been. Of the present there is necessarily no image. "
William Godwin
Image
Past
Future
" 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. "
William Godwin
Endure
Patience
Man
" Government, as it was forced upon mankind by their vices, so has it commonly been the creature of their ignorance and mistake. "
William Godwin
Government
Vices
Mistake
" 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? "
William Godwin
Thinking
Race
Great
" What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name. "
William Godwin
Life
Merit
Name
" What is there so offensive to which habit has not the power to reconcile us? "
William Godwin
Habit
Reconcile
Power
" Without imagination, there can be no genuine ardor in any pursuit or for any acquisition, and without imagination, there can be no genuine morality, no profound feeling of other men's sorrow, no ardent and persevering anxiety for their interests. "
William Godwin
Imagination
Feeling
Anxiety
" I was famous in our college for calm and impassionate discussion; for one whole summer, I rose at five and went to bed at midnight, that I might have sufficient time for theology and metaphysics. "
William Godwin
Rose
Bed
College
" 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. "
William Godwin
Corrupt
Man
More
" The most desirable state of mankind is that which maintains general security with the smallest encroachment upon individual independence. "
William Godwin
Most
Security
Independence
" 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
" 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. "
William Godwin
Innocence
Mind
Man
" 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
" 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
" The question now afloat in the world respecting 'things as they are' is the most interesting that can be presented to the human mind. While one party pleads for reformation and change, the other extols in the warmest terms the existing constitution of society. "
William Godwin
Change
Society
Now
" In the graver and more sentimental communication of man and man, the head still bears the superior sway; in the unreserved intimacies of man and woman, the heart is ever uppermost. Feeling is the main thing, and judgment passes for little. "
William Godwin
Head
Man
Heart
" 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. "
William Godwin
Thought
Man
Meaning
" Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny. "
William Godwin
Itself
Pregnant
Revolution
" Occupation - pressing occupation that will not be said nay - is a sovereign remedy for grief. "
William Godwin
Grief
Will
Said
" Superior virtue must be the fruit of superior intelligence. "
William Godwin
Virtue
Superior
Fruit
" Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason. "
William Godwin
Passion
Tranquil
Sober
" Duty is that mode of action which constitutes the best application of the capacity of the individual to the general advantage. "
William Godwin
Duty
Capacity
Action
" 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
" Extraordinary circumstances often bring along with them extraordinary strength. No man knows, till the experiment, what he is capable of effecting. "
William Godwin
Strength
Man
He
" The four principal oral instructors to whom I feel my mind indebted for improvement were Joseph Fawcet, Thomas Holcroft, George Dyson, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. "
William Godwin
Principal
Four
Feel
" We have, all of us, our duties. Every action of our lives, and every word that we utter, will either conduce to or detract from the discharge of our duty. "
William Godwin
Will
Word
Either
" Justice is the sum of all moral duty. "
William Godwin
Moral
Legal
Justice
" Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education. "
William Godwin
Educate
Us
Haste
" 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
" 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