198 Quotes by William Godwin

There is an indescribable something that ties us to life. For this purpose, it is not necessary that we should be happy. Though our life be almost without enjoyment, we do not consent to part with it.

Superior virtue must be the fruit of superior intelligence.

It is indeed specially characteristic of the passion of love that it has the faculty of giving a perpetual flow to the interchange of sentiments and reflections in conversation.

I am now in the full maturity of my age and vigor of my mind. Persons of various descriptions have repeatedly solicited me to turn my mind to dramatical composition. It was, indeed, the first amusement of my thoughts in my school-boy cell.

Human depravity originates in the vices of political constitution.

There is a class of persons whose souls are essentially non-conductors to the electricity of sentiment, and whose minds seem to be filled with their own train of thinking, convictions, and purposes to the exclusion of everything else.

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.

I know nothing worth the living for but usefulness and the service of my fellow-creatures. The only object I pursue is to increase, as far as lies in my power, the quantity of their knowledge and goodness and happiness.

There is scarcely an instant that passes over our heads that may not have its freight of infamy. How ought we to watch over our thoughts, that we may not so much as imagine any enormity!