William Hazlitt Quotes - Page 2

True friendship is self-love at second hand.
William Hazlitt
We often choose a friend as we do a mistress for no particular excellence in themselves but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.
William Hazlitt
To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love are the two greatest proofs not only of goodness of heart but of strength of mind.
William Hazlitt
We are fonder of visiting our friends in health than in sickness. We judge less favorably of their characters when any misfortune happens to them and a lucky hit either in business or reputation improves even their personal appearance in our eyes.
William Hazlitt
It is well there is no one without fault for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to a different species.
William Hazlitt
Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.
William Hazlitt
Though familiarity may not breed contempt it takes off the edge of admiration.
William Hazlitt
Faith is necessary to victory.
William Hazlitt
The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way ... an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.
William Hazlitt
Zeal will do more than knowledge.
William Hazlitt
A strong passion for any object will ensure success for the desire of the end will point out the means.
William Hazlitt
The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: The one thinks everything right that is French the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.
William Hazlitt
The soul of dispatch is decision.
William Hazlitt
Reason with most people means their own opinions.
William Hazlitt
Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.
William Hazlitt
Wit is the salt of conversation not the food.
William Hazlitt
Silence is one great art of conversation.
William Hazlitt
We may be willing to tell a story twice never to hear it more than once.
William Hazlitt
Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty hesitation or incongruity.
William Hazlitt
We do not die wholly at our deaths: we have moldered away gradually long before. Faculty after faculty interest after interest attachment after attachment disappear: we are torn from ourselves while living.
William Hazlitt
Prosperity is a great teacher adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind privation trains and strengthens it.
William Hazlitt
The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way: an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.
William Hazlitt
Actors are the only honest hypocrites.
William Hazlitt
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they might have been.
William Hazlitt
In some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates.
William Hazlitt
If we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning we may only study his commentators. ["On the Ignorance of the Learned"]
William Hazlitt
We occasionally see something on the stage that reminds us a
William Hazlitt
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.
William Hazlitt
Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) - neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.
William Hazlitt
Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
William Hazlitt
Repose is necessary to great efforts, and he who is never idle, labours in vain!
William Hazlitt
Sacrifices are no sacrifices when they are repaid a thousand fold.
William Hazlitt
Rome has been called the "Sacred City": - might not our Oxford be called so too? There is an air about it, resonant of joy and hope: it speaks with a thousand tongues to the heart: it waves its mighty shadow over the imagination: it stands in lowly sublimity, on the "hill of ages"; and points with prophetic fingers to the sky: it greets the eager gaze from afar, "with glistering spires and pinnacles adorned," that shine with an internal light as with the lustre of setting suns; and a dream and a glory hover round its head, as the spirits of former times, a throng of intellectual shapes, are seen retreating or advancing to the eye of memory: its streets are paved with the names of learning that can never wear out: its green quadrangles breathe the silence of thought.
William Hazlitt
Modern fanaticism thrives in proportion to the quanitity of contradictions and nonsense it poures down the throats of the gaping multitude, and the jargon and mysticism it offers to their wonder and credulity.
William Hazlitt
The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.
William Hazlitt
A man's life is his whole life, not the last glimmering snuff of the candle; and this, I say, is considerable, and not a little matter, whether we regard its pleasures or its pains. To draw a peevish conclusion to the contrary from our own superannuated desires or forgetful indifference is about as reasonable as to say, a man never was young because he has grown old, or never lived because he is now dead. The length or agreeableness of a journey does not depend on the few last steps of it, nor is the size of a building to be judged of from the last stone that is added to it. It is neither the first nor last hour of our existence, but the space that parts these two - not our exit nor our entrance upon the stage, but what we do, feel, and think while there - that we are to attend to in pronouncing sentence upon it.
William Hazlitt
He understands the texture and meaning of the visible universe, and 'sees into the life of things,' not by the help of mechanical instruments, but of the improved exercise of his faculties, and an intimate sympathy with Nature. The meanest thing is not lost upon him, for he looks at it with an eye to itself, not merely to his own vanity or interest, or the opinion of the world. Even where there is neither beauty nor use—if that ever were—still there is truth, and a sufficient source of gratification in the indulgence of curiosity and activity of mind. The humblest printer is a true scholar; and the best of scholars - the scholar of Nature.
William Hazlitt
A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.
William Hazlitt
Good-nature, or what is often considered as such, is the most selfish of all the virtues: it is nine times out of ten mere indolence of disposition.
William Hazlitt
Never so sure our rapture to createAs when it touch'd the brink of all we hate.
William Hazlitt
Love turns, with little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal.
William Hazlitt
The perceiving our own weaknesses enables us to give others excellent advice, but it does not teach us to to reform ourselves.
William Hazlitt
THE rule for travelling abroad is to take our common sense with us, and leave our prejudices behind us. The object of travelling is to see and learn; but such is our impatience of ignorance, or the jealousy of our self-love, that we generally set up a certain preconception beforehand (in self-defence, or as a barrier against the lessons of experience,) and are surprised at or quarrel with all that does not conform to it. Let us think what we please of what we really find, but pr
William Hazlitt
I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me besides what interferes with my own ease and interest. I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many enemies and few friends; for the public know nothing of well-wishers, and keep a wary eye on those who would reform them.
William Hazlitt
The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.
William Hazlitt
Words are the only things that last for ever.
William Hazlitt
The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.
William Hazlitt
The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.
William Hazlitt
He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.
William Hazlitt
Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our
William Hazlitt
The path of genius is free, and its own
William Hazlitt
the old maxim... "there are three things necessary to success in life--Impudence! Impudence! Impudence!
William Hazlitt
The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.
William Hazlitt
Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic.
William Hazlitt