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" How nations and races of men are to be so governed as may be most conducive to the improvement and happiness of all is one of the most interesting questions that can be offered to our consideration. "

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" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself. "

" The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children. "

" Tenderness is the name for a lover's most exquisite sensation; protection is implied in his most generous and heart-thrilling impulse. "

" 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. "

" There is reverence that we owe to everything in human shape. "

" Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil. "

" We cannot, any of us, do all the things of which mankind stand in need; we must have fellow-labourers. "

William Godwin

Mankind

Stand

" If a thing be really good, it can be shown to be such. "

" It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn. "

" England has been called, with great felicity of conception, 'the land of liberty and good sense.' We have preserved many of the advantages of a free people, which the nations of the Continent have long since lost. "

" 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. "

" Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny. "

" Study with desire is real activity; without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity. "

" 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. "

" 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

" A world of derived beings, an immense, wide creation, requires an extended scale with various ranks and orders of existence. "

" The Italian character in general is full of animation, and the natives enter into the interests and welfare of the stranger before them with a fervor that forbids all doubt of its sincerity and that is truly surprising. "

" Religion is among the most beautiful and most natural of all things - that religion which 'sees God in clouds and hears Him in the wind,' which endows every object of sense with a living soul, which finds in the system of nature whatever is holy, mysterious and venerable, and inspires the bosom with sentiments of awe and veneration. "

" Government, as it was forced upon mankind by their vices, so has it commonly been the creature of their ignorance and mistake. "