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. – William Godwin
Study with desire is real activity; without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity. – William Godwin
There is nothing that human imagination can figure brilliant and enviable that human genius and skill do not aspire to realize. – William Godwin
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
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. – William Godwin
I never did, and I never will, thank any man for altering any one word of my compositions without my privity. – William Godwin
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
The real or supposed rights of man are of two kinds, active and passive; the right in certain cases to do as we list; and the right we possess to the forbearance or assistance of other men. – William Godwin
In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question. – William Godwin
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
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. – William Godwin
Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind. – William Godwin
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
How nations and races of men are to be so governed as may be most conducive to the improvement and happiness of all is one of the most interesting questions that can be offered to our consideration. – William Godwin
Invisible things are the only realities; invisible things alone are the things that shall remain. – William Godwin
My temper is of a recluse and contemplative cast; had it been otherwise, I should, perhaps, on some former occasions, have entered into the active concerns of the world and not have been connected with it merely as a writer of books. – William Godwin
I am an enemy to revolutions. I abhor, both from temper and from the clearest judgment I am able to form, all violent convulsions in the affairs of men. – William Godwin
The admission of one man, either hereditarily or for life only, into the place of chief of a country, is an evidence of the infirmity of man. Nature has set up no difference between a king and other men; a king, therefore, is purely the creation of our own hands. – William Godwin
To diminish the cases in which the assistance of others is felt absolutely necessary is the only genuine road to independence. – William Godwin
I was brought up in great tenderness, and though my mind was proud to independence, I was never led to much independence of feeling. – William Godwin
No one can display or can cultivate a fervent zeal in the mere repetition of a form. – William Godwin
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. – William Godwin
But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference. – William Godwin
Love conquers all difficulties, surmounts all obstacles, and effects what to any other power would be impossible. – William Godwin
The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation. – William Godwin
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. – William Godwin
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