Nothing could’ve been more easy to predict, than that it was of no avail for him to have right on his side when his adversary had influence and wealth, and therefore could so victoriously justify any extravagancies that he might think proper to commit. This maxim was completely illustrated in the sequel. Wealth and despotism easily know how to engage those laws as coadjutors of their oppression, which were perhaps at first intended for the safeguards of the poor.

— William Godwin

William Godwin Quotes

But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.

— William Godwin

Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a man at which nations tremble.

— William Godwin

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

— William Godwin

We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.

— William Godwin

The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.

— William Godwin

One of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished from all other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth, consists in the gift of reason.

— William Godwin

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.

— William Godwin

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

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

— William Godwin

If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.

— William Godwin

Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.

— William Godwin

If admiration were not generally deemed the exclusive property of the rich, and contempt the constant lackey of poverty, the love of gain would cease to be an universal problem.

— William Godwin

The first duty of man is to take none of the principles of conduct upon trust; to do nothing without a clear and individual conviction that it is right to be done.

— William Godwin

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

— William Godwin

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

— William Godwin

We are so curiously made that one atom put in the wrong place in our original structure will often make us unhappy for life.

— William Godwin

What power there is in the word my.

— William Godwin

Till we come to try to put our own thoughts upon paper, we can have no notion how broke and imperfect they are, or find where the imperfection lies. Language is a scheme of machinery of so subtle a kind, that it is only by long habits that we can learn to conduct it in a masterly manner, or to the best purposes.

— William Godwin

Nothing could’ve been more easy to predict, than that it was of no avail for him to have right on his side when his adversary had influence and wealth, and therefore could so victoriously justify any extravagancies that he might think proper to commit. This maxim was completely illustrated in the sequel. Wealth and despotism easily know how to engage those laws as coadjutors of their oppression, which were perhaps at first intended for the safeguards of the poor.

— William Godwin

To do what is forbidden always has its charms, because we have an indistinct apprehension of something arbitrary and tyrannical in the prohibition.

— William Godwin
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