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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

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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
Necessarily
Image
Thoughts
Present
Taken
Future
Past
Come

More quotes by William Godwin

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If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.
William Godwin
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God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
William Godwin
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It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.
William Godwin
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Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.
William Godwin
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Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
William Godwin
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Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
William Godwin
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Justice is the sum of all moral duty.
William Godwin
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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
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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.
William Godwin
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The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
William Godwin
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What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.
William Godwin
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The wise man is satisfied with nothing.
William Godwin
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Obey this may be right but beware of reverence.... Government is nothing but regulated force force is its appropriate claim upon your attention. It is the business of individuals to persuade the tendency of concentrated strength, is only to give consistency and permanence to an influence more compendious than persuasion.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.
William Godwin
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The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.
William Godwin
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The cause of justice is the cause of humanity. Its advocates should overflow with universal good will. We should love this cause, for it conduces to the general happiness of mankind.
William Godwin
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Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.... An attempt to scrutinize men's thoughts and punish their opinions is of all kinds of despotism the most odious: yet this is peculiarly character of a period of revolution.... There is no period more at war with the existence of liberty.
William Godwin
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My mind was bursting with depression and anguish. I muttered imprecations and murmuring as I passed along. I was full of loathing and abhorrence of life, and all that life carries in its train.
William Godwin
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The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.
William Godwin