William Hazlitt Quotes
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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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Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man.
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No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.
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We are thankful for good-will rather than for services, for the motive than the quantum of favor received.
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Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.
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If our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as little note of them as the dial does of those that are clouded.
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A wise traveler never despises his own country.
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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.
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Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.
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I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.
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Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him.
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We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into a union by all the intolerance in the world. If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary rules.
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A certain excess of animal spirits with thoughtless good-humor will often make more enemies than the most deliberate spite and ill-nature, which is on its guard, and strikes with caution and safety.
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The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.
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To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.
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The worst old age is that of the mind.
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They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
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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.
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The confined air of a metropolis is hurtful to the minds and bodies of those who have never lived out of it. It is impure, stagnant--without breathing-space to allow a larger view of ourselves or others--and gives birth to a puny, sickly, unwholesome, and degenerate race of beings.
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There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. "I count only the hours that are serene.".
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Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.
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It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, anymore than they grow stronger or healthier or honest.
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You are never tired of painting, because you have to set down not what you know already, but what you have just discovered.
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We are not hypocrites in our sleep.