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" 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. "

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" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Soundness of understanding is connected with freedom of enquiry; consequently, opinion should, as far as public security will admit, be exempted from restraint. "

" 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. "

" Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him. "

" 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. "

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

" There is scarcely an instant that passes over our heads that may not have its freight of infamy. How ought we to watch over our thoughts, that we may not so much as imagine any enormity! "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" It is indeed specially characteristic of the passion of love that it has the faculty of giving a perpetual flow to the interchange of sentiments and reflections in conversation. "

" 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. "

" Men who do not contend in earnest can have little warmth and fervor in what they undertake, and are more than half prepared to betray the cause, in the vindication of which they have engaged their services. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason. "

" The man who plays his part upon the theatre of life almost always maintains what may be called an artificial character. "

" Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind. "

" 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! "

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

" Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it. "

" The diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and desires to have reason to applaud and love himself. "