Quote

No maxim can be more pernicious than that which would teach us to consult the temper of the times, and to tell only so much as we imagine our contemporaries will be able to bear.

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
Imagine
Consult
Teach
Contemporaries
Times
Maxim
Tell
Pernicious
Able
Maxims
Much
Temper
Would
Bear
Bears

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We are so curiously made that one atom put in the wrong place in our original structure will often make us unhappy for life.
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It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn. The true object of juvenile education, is to provide, against the age of five and twenty, a mind well regulated, active, and prepared to learn. Whatever will inspire habits of industry and observation, will sufficiently answer this purpose.
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To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.
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Power is not happiness.
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What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child?
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Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.
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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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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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There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
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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.
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There is no sphere in which a human being can be supposed to act where one mode of reasoning will not, in every given instance, be more reasonable than any other mode. That mode the being is bound by every principle of justice to pursue.
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Whenever truth stands in the mind unaccompanied by the evidence upon which it depends, it cannot properly be said to be apprehended at all.
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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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We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.
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Above all we should not forget, that government is an evil, an usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of mankind.
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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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Invisible things are the only realities invisible things alone are the things that shall remain.
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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.
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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.
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The wise man is satisfied with nothing.
William Godwin