Zitat des Tages von William Godwin:
The diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and desires to have reason to applaud and love himself.
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.
Invisible things are the only realities; invisible things alone are the things that shall remain.
Self-deception is so far from impossible that it is one of the most ordinary phenomena with which we are acquainted. Nothing is more usual than for a man to impute his actions to honorable motives when it is nearly demonstrable that they flowed from some corrupt and contemptible force.
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.
Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands, and perpetuate its institutions.
Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
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.
There is reverence that we owe to everything in human shape.
What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child?
It is of no consequence whether a man of genius have learned either art or science before twenty-five: all that is necessary, or even desirable, is that his powers should be unfolded, his emulation roused, and his habits conducted into a right channel.
God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him.
The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.
In the summer of 1791, I gave up my concern in the 'New Annual Register,' the historical part of which I had written for seven years, and abdicated, I hope forever, the task of performing a literary labour, the nature of which should be dictated by anything but the promptings of my own mind.
But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.
Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil.
Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind.
The true key of the universe is love.
As the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking.
Enthusiasm is always an interesting spectacle. When it expresses itself with an honest and artless eloquence, it is difficult to listen to it and not, in some degree, to catch the flame.
What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.
Love conquers all difficulties, surmounts all obstacles, and effects what to any other power would be impossible.
I was famous in our college for calm and impassionate discussion; for one whole summer, I rose at five and went to bed at midnight, that I might have sufficient time for theology and metaphysics.
We cannot, any of us, do all the things of which mankind stand in need; we must have fellow-labourers.
There must be room for the imagination to exercise its powers; we must conceive and apprehend a thousand things which we do not actually witness.
The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.
Religion is among the most beautiful and most natural of all things - that religion which 'sees God in clouds and hears Him in the wind,' which endows every object of sense with a living soul, which finds in the system of nature whatever is holy, mysterious and venerable, and inspires the bosom with sentiments of awe and veneration.
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.
He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
The value of a man is in his intrinsic qualities: in that of which power cannot strip him and which adverse fortune cannot take away. That for which he is indebted to circumstances is mere trapping and tinsel.
It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.
In the graver and more sentimental communication of man and man, the head still bears the superior sway; in the unreserved intimacies of man and woman, the heart is ever uppermost. Feeling is the main thing, and judgment passes for little.
Justice is the sum of all moral duty.
Every man has a certain sphere of discretion which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbours. This right flows from the very nature of man.
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.