Love Quote by William Godwin

Godwin slips a provocation into what sounds like a pious compliment to study: the engine of scholarship isn’t self-sacrifice, it’s self-regard. “The diligent scholar” isn’t driven by pure devotion to truth or some hazy public good; he “loves himself,” and wants the kind of life that gives him grounds to keep loving himself. The line is bracing because it re-centers virtue on a psychological fact most moralists try to scrub away: people need to live with themselves. Godwin’s scholar pursues learning not to look saintly, but to earn an internal applause that can’t be faked.

The subtext is even sharper. Godwin is writing in an era when education is wrapped in hierarchy and deference, when “scholarship” can become a badge of class or a performance for patrons. By relocating the motive inward, he quietly demotes external approval. You don’t study to be seen; you study to deserve your own respect. That’s a radical standard because it implies an audience you can’t bribe: conscience, reason, the private self that keeps accounts.

Context matters: Godwin, a key voice in British radical thought, distrusted inherited authority and pushed for rational self-governance. His ethics often hinge on the idea that moral life should be intelligible to the individual mind, not enforced by custom or fear. Here, “self-love” isn’t vanity; it’s a demand for coherence between actions and principles. Diligence becomes a form of self-legislation: the scholar builds a self that can stand its own scrutiny.