Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.
William GodwinRead
There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Imagination is essential for passion and love to flourish.
This quote suggests that passion and love are deeply intertwined with our ability to imagine and envision possibilities. Without imagination, the feelings and experiences that constitute love cannot fully develop, indicating that creativity and vision are vital components of emotional connection.
Themes
ImaginationPassionLoveCreativityEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
During a wedding speech, you could say, 'As William Godwin said, there can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.'
More from William Godwin
All quotes βIt is one of the oldest maxims of moral prudence: Do not, by aspiring to what is impracticable, lose the opportunity of doing the good you can effect!
William GodwinRead
When the calamity we feared is already arrived, or when the expectation of it is so certain as to shut out hope, there seems to be a principle within us by which we look with misanthropic composure on the state to which we are reduced, and the heart sullenly contracts and accommodates itself to what it most abhorred.
William GodwinRead
He has no right to his life when his duty calls him to resign it. Other men are bound... to deprive him of life or liberty, if that should appear in any case to be indispensably necessary to prevent a greater evil.
William GodwinRead
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.
William GodwinRead
Extraordinary circumstances often bring along with them extraordinary strength. No man knows, till the experiment, what he is capable of effecting.
William GodwinRead
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To love! To surrender absolutely, to prostrate oneself before the divine image, to die a thousand imaginary deaths, to annihilate every trace of self, to find the whole universe embodied and enshrined in the living image of another! Adolescent, we say. Rot! This is the germ of the future life, the seed which we hide away, which we bury deep within us, which we smother and stifle and do our utmost to destroy as we advance from one experience to another and flutter and flounder and lose our way.
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During the 'ballad' years for me, the politics was latent; I was just falling in love with the ballads and my boyfriend. And there was the beauty of the songs.
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