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

William Godwin

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William Godwin
Age: 80 †
Born: 1756
Born: March 3
Died: 1836
Died: April 7
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Political Philosopher
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Wisbech
Cambridgeshire
Influence
Principles
Desire
Operate
Cannot
Encouraging
Perseverance
Principle
Active
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Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.
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Study with desire is real activity without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity.
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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.
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Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
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Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a name at which nations tremble.
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The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.
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What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.
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He has no right to his life when his duty calls him to resign it. Other men are bound ... to deprive him of life or liberty, if that should appear in any case to be indispensably necessary to prevent a greater evil.
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The proper method for hastening the decay of error, is not, by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.
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Everything that is usually understood by the term co-operation is, in some degree, an evil.
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Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.
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There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
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God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
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Learning is the ally, not the adversary of genius... he who reads in a proper spirit, can scarcely read too much.
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The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.
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It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings to coincide, through any long period of time. To oblige them to act and live together is to subject them to some inevitable potion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness.
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He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
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The most desirable mode of education, is that which is careful that all the acquisitions of the pupil shall be preceded and accompanied by desire . . . The boy, like the man, studies because he desires it. He proceeds upon a plan of is own invention, or by which, by adopting, he has made his own. Everything bespeaks independence and inequality.
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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
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Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
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