William Hazlitt Quotes
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Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement; it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.
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Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?
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He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan.
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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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Principle is a passion for truth.
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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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The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, "No. There was a fire in the room."
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Horus non numero nisi serenas (I count only the sunny hours).
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The devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate; he supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him.
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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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They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
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The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desires of the soul, and of which it never tires.
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We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.
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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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Well I've had a happy life.
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The worst old age is that of the mind.
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Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity.
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We grow tired of ourselves, much more of other people.
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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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The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.
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Affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body.
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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 severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.