Quote#Poetry
Above all, the poet, whose judgment should be clear, whose feelings…
Quote byWilliam Godwin · 1756–1836
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer vol. 1, p. 370 (1803).
English (original)
Above all, the poet, whose judgment should be clear, whose feelings should be uniform and sound, whose sense should be alive to every impression and hardened to none, who is the legislator of generations and the moral instructor of the world, ought never to have been a practising lawyer, or ought speedily to have quitted so dangerous an engagement.
— William Godwin
More from William Godwin
I took some pains to convince you that the Whigs, as a party in the state, were of the highest value to the public welfare, and constituted the party to which a liberal-minded and enlightened man would adhere.
Government was intended to suppress injustice, but it offers new occasions and temptations for the commission of it.
Truth is powerful, and, if not instantly, at least by slow degrees, may make good her possession. Gleams of good sense may penetrate through the thickest clouds of error.
It has an unhappy effect upon the human understanding and temper, for a man to be compelled in his gravest investigation of an argument, to consider, not what is true, but what is convenient.
You rejoice in having made a convert to Atheism. I think there is something unnatural in a zeal of proselytism in an Atheist. I do not believe in an intellectual God, a God made after the image of man. In the vulgar acceptation of the …
Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it.