Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" It is questionless desirable in all ordinary cases, wherever positive law is established, to restrain ourselves within the letter of that law and to allow the criminal all the benefit, if benefit to him shall result, of any evasion or escape that the law shall afford him. "

Related Quotes:

" 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 world is all alike. Those that seem better than their neighbours are only more artful. They mean the same thing, though they take a different road. "

" The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation. "

" Invisible things are the only realities; invisible things alone are the things that shall remain. "

" Every boy learns more in his hours of play than in his hours of labor. In school, he lays in the materials of thinking, but in his sports, he actually thinks: he whets his faculties, and he opens his eyes. "

" Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education. "

William Godwin

Educate

Haste

" It is the misfortune of those who are concerned in conducting human affairs that, however pure and capacious their own conceptions may be, they must accommodate themselves to the circumstances with which they are environed and use the instruments that are within their reach. "

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

" The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years. "

" 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. "

" God himself has no right to be a tyrant. "

" There is an indescribable something that ties us to life. For this purpose, it is not necessary that we should be happy. Though our life be almost without enjoyment, we do not consent to part with it. "

" Everything in the world is conducted by gradual process. This seems to be the great principle of harmony in the universe. "

" The true key of the universe is love. "

" There must be room for the imagination to exercise its powers; we must conceive and apprehend a thousand things which we do not actually witness. "

" It is of no consequence whether a man of genius have learned either art or science before twenty-five: all that is necessary, or even desirable, is that his powers should be unfolded, his emulation roused, and his habits conducted into a right channel. "

" In the summer of 1791, I gave up my concern in the 'New Annual Register,' the historical part of which I had written for seven years, and abdicated, I hope forever, the task of performing a literary labour, the nature of which should be dictated by anything but the promptings of my own mind. "

" 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. "

" Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands, and perpetuate its institutions. "

" No one can display or can cultivate a fervent zeal in the mere repetition of a form. "

" In the two novels I have published, it was my fortune at different times, and from different persons, to hear the most unqualified censure long before it was possible for me to hear the voice of the public. But my temper was not altered, nor my courage subdued. "

" I am most peremptorily of opinion against putting children extremely forward. If they desire it themselves, I would not balk them, for I love to attend to these unsophisticated indications. But otherwise, 'festina lente' is my maxim in education. "

" He that loves reading has everything within his reach. "

" He has no right to his life when his duty calls him to resign it. Other men are bound... to deprive him of life or liberty, if that should appear in any case to be indispensably necessary to prevent a greater evil. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" During my academical life, and from this time forward, I was indefatigable in my search after truth. I read all the authors of greatest repute, for and against the Trinity, original sin, and the most disputed doctrines, but I was not yet of an understanding sufficiently ripe for impartial decision, and all my inquiries terminated in Calvinism. "

William Godwin

Decision

Truth

" 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

" Religion is the most important of all things: the great point of discrimination that divides the man from the brute. It is our special prerogative that we can converse with that which we cannot see and believe in that the existence of which is reported to us by none of our senses. "