{"author":"William Godwin","author_id":"William+Godwin","total_quotes":33,"quotes":[{"text":"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.","author":"William Godwin","tags":["time","college","rose "],"id":9177,"author_id":"William+Godwin"},{"text":"While my mother lived, I always felt to a certain degree as if I had somebody who was my superior and who exercised a mysterious protection over me. I belonged to something - I hung to something - there is nothing that has so much reverence and religion in it as affection to parents.","author":"William Godwin","tags":["mother","parents","me "],"id":17001,"author_id":"William+Godwin"},{"text":"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.","author":"William Godwin","tags":["man","existence","endure "],"id":53077,"author_id":"William+Godwin"},{"text":"It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings to coincide, through any long period of time. To oblige them to act and live together is to subject them to some inevitable potion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness.","author":"William Godwin","tags":["anarchy","love","marriage"],"id":91686,"author_id":"William+Godwin"},{"text":"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.","author":"William Godwin","tags":["man","right","expect "],"id":95298,"author_id":"William+Godwin"},{"text":"Every boy learns more in his hours of play than in his hours of labor. In school, he lays in the materials of thinking, but in his sports, he actually thinks: he whets his faculties, and he opens his eyes.","author":"William Godwin","tags":["eyes","school","thinking "],"id":98827,"author_id":"William+Godwin"},{"text":"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.","author":"William Godwin","tags":["nature","beautiful","god "],"id":108735,"author_id":"William+Godwin"},{"text":"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.","author":"William Godwin","tags":["strong","me","doubt "],"id":125608,"author_id":"William+Godwin"},{"text":"Superior virtue must be the fruit of superior intelligence.","author":"William Godwin","tags":["fruit","virtue","must "],"id":131216,"author_id":"William+Godwin"},{"text":"Strange that men, from age to age, should consent to hold their lives at the breath of another, merely that each in his turn may have a power of acting the tyrant according to the law! Oh, God! Give me poverty! Shower upon me all the imaginary hardships of human life! I will receive them with all thankfulness. Turn me a prey to the wild beasts of the desert, so I be never again the victim of man, dressed in the gore-dripping robes of authority! Suffer me at least to call life, the pursuits of life, my own! Let me hold it at the mercy of the elements, of the hunger of the beasts, or the revenge of barbarians, but not of the cold-blooded prudence of monopolists and kings!","author":"William Godwin","tags":["anarchy","government","psalms"],"id":139067,"author_id":"William+Godwin"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":33,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}