Menu

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

William Godwin Quotes

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

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

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

– William Godwin

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.

– William Godwin

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

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

The love of independence and dislike of unjust treatment is the source of a thousand virtues.

– William Godwin

Harshness and unkindness are relative. The appearance of them may be the fruits of the greatest kindness.

– William Godwin

I know not how it is: there are some businesses for which dullness seems to be a qualification.

– William Godwin

Occupation – pressing occupation that will not be said nay – is a sovereign remedy for grief.

– William Godwin

We covet experience; we have a secret desire to learn, not from cold prohibition, but from trial, whether those things, which are not without a semblance of good, are really so ill as they are described to us.

– William Godwin

No man knows the value of innocence and integrity but he who has lost them.

– William Godwin

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.

– William Godwin

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

I believe in this being, not because I have any proper or direct knowledge of His existence, but I am at a loss to account for the existence and arrangement of the visible universe, and, being left in the wide sea of conjecture without a clue from analogy or experience, I find the conjecture of a God easy, obvious, and irresistible.

– William Godwin

Man is a being of a mixed nature; and, as there is no integrity without its flaws, so is there no man so knavish but that in some things he may be trusted.

– William Godwin

Extraordinary circumstances often bring along with them extraordinary strength. No man knows, till the experiment, what he is capable of effecting.

– William Godwin

He that loves reading has everything within his reach.

– William Godwin

The most desirable state of mankind is that which maintains general security with the smallest encroachment upon individual independence.

– William Godwin

The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.

– William Godwin

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

– William Godwin

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

As the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking.

– William Godwin

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

– William Godwin

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

– William Godwin

When we look on the roses and gaiety of youth, the mournful idea of mortality is altogether alien to our thoughts. We have heard of it as a speculation and a tale, but nothing but experience can bring it home to us.

– William Godwin

Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire.

– William Godwin

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

– William Godwin

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

– William Godwin

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.

– William Godwin

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5