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" Law is made for man and not man for the law. Wherever we can be sure that the most valuable interests of a nation require that we should decide one way, that way we ought to decide. "
William Godwin
Nation
Wherever
Way
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" No man knows the value of innocence and integrity but he who has lost them. "
William Godwin
Lost
Integrity
Value
" 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. "
William Godwin
Him
Escape
Law
" In infamy, it is wisely provided that he who stands highest in the ranks of society has the heaviest load to sustain. "
William Godwin
Who
Wisely
Sustain
" Human creatures, living in the circle of their intimates and friends, are too apt to remain in ignorance of the comments and instructions which may be made of what they say and do in the world at large. I entertain a great horror of this ignorance. "
William Godwin
Ignorance
Great
World
" The love of independence and dislike of unjust treatment is the source of a thousand virtues. "
William Godwin
Dislike
Virtues
Love
" What are gold and jewels and precious utensils? Mere dross and dirt. The human face and the human heart, reciprocations of kindness and love, and all the nameless sympathies of our nature - these are the only objects worth being attached to. "
William Godwin
Nature
Face
Heart
" 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. "
William Godwin
Right
Science
Habits
" 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. "
William Godwin
Political
Enemy
History
" 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. "
William Godwin
Lost
Long
Great
" Woe to the man who is always busy - hurried in a turmoil of engagements, from occupation to occupation, and with no seasons interposed of recollection, contemplation and repose! Such a man must inevitably be gross and vulgar, and hard and indelicate - the sort of man with whom no generous spirit would desire to hold intercourse. "
William Godwin
Busy
Man
Hard
" In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question. "
William Godwin
Out
Understood
Question
" Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him. "
William Godwin
Him
Natural
Life
" 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
" 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
" Give energy, and mental exertion will always have attraction enough. "
William Godwin
Always
Will
Mental
" What is high birth to him to whom high birth has never been the theme of his contemplation? What is a throne to him who has never dreamed of a throne? "
William Godwin
Never
Throne
Theme
" The true key of the universe is love. "
William Godwin
Universe
Key
Love
" 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. "
William Godwin
Animation
Sincerity
Doubt
" Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil. "
William Godwin
Everything
Understood
Sense
" The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself. "
William Godwin
Think
Teaching
Every Man
" Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason. "
William Godwin
Passion
Tranquil
Sober
" 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. "
William Godwin
Great
Believe
Man
" 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. "
William Godwin
Process
Other
Thought
" Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education. "
William Godwin
Educate
Us
Haste
" 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
" 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. "
William Godwin
Reach
Circumstances
Human
" The most desirable state of mankind is that which maintains general security with the smallest encroachment upon individual independence. "
William Godwin
Most
Security
Independence
" Since it is one of the great attributes of our species to be susceptible of improvement and capable of experiencing the most beneficial changes, for this reason what are vulgarly called 'venerable establishments' will often range themselves in opposition to the best interests of the community. "
William Godwin
Best
Improvement
Great
" 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
" We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity. "
William Godwin
Capacity
Think
Power