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Danh ngôn của William Godwin (Sứ mệnh: 7)

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.
He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.
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.
Justice is the sum of all moral duty.
There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
Superior virtue must be the fruit of superior intelligence.
The love of independence and dislike of unjust treatment is the source of a thousand virtues.
In the two novels I have published, it was my fortune at different times, and from different persons, to hear the most unqualified censure long before it was possible for me to hear the voice of the public. But my temper was not altered, nor my courage subdued.
I was brought up in great tenderness, and though my mind was proud to independence, I was never led to much independence of feeling.
The most desirable state of mankind is that which maintains general security with the smallest encroachment upon individual independence.
Invisible things are the only realities; invisible things alone are the things that shall remain.
Sympathy is one of the principles most widely rooted in our nature: we rejoice to see ourselves reflected in another; and, perversely enough, we sometimes have a secret pleasure in seeing the sin which dwells in ourselves existing under a deformed and monstrous aspect in another.
It is necessary for him who would endure existence with patience that he should conceive himself to be something - that he should be persuaded he is not a cipher in the muster-roll of man.
To diminish the cases in which the assistance of others is felt absolutely necessary is the only genuine road to independence.
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.
Extraordinary circumstances often bring along with them extraordinary strength. No man knows, till the experiment, what he is capable of effecting.
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.
Love conquers all difficulties, surmounts all obstacles, and effects what to any other power would be impossible.