William Hazlitt Quotes
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No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.
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The way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it.
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Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own, and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image of itself. Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant objects please because they border on its confines and are moulded by its touch.
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It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
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An honest man is respected by all parties.
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Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.
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Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood.
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A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them.
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Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere.
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Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.
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The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.
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Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others, who feel that the world has done them justice.
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Actors are the only honest hypocrites.
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Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man.
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Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.
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People addicted to secrecy are so without knowing why; they are not so for cause, but for secrecy's sake.
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Tears may be considered as the natural and involuntary resource of the mind overcome by some sudden and violent emotion, before ithas had time to reconcile its feelings to the change in circumstances: while laughter may be defined to be the same sort of convulsive and involuntary movement, occasioned by mere sur prise or contrast (in the absence of any more serious emotion), before it has time to reconcile its belief to contradictory appearances.
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Everything is in motion. Everything flows. Everything is vibrating.
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Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.
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Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.
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The only true retirement is that of the heart; the only true leisure is the repose of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference whether they are young or old; and they die as they have lived, with graceful resignation.
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There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.
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The incentive to ambition is the love of power.
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Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.