William Hazlitt Quotes
-
The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.
-
The way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it.
-
The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.
-
However we may flatter ourselves to the contrary, our friends think no higher of us than the world do. They see us through the jaundiced or distrustful eyes of others. They may know better, but their feelings are governed by popular prejudice. Nay, they are more shy of us (when under a cloud) than even strangers; for we involve them in a common disgrace, or compel them to embroil themselves in continual quarrels and disputes in our defense.
-
They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
-
A man who does not endeavour to seem more than he is will generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention to fashion is necessary.
-
He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.
-
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.
-
Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.
-
There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.
-
The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.
-
The youth is better than the old age of friendship.
-
So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.
-
It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.
-
We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.
-
People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking.
-
We may be willing to tell a story twice, never to hear it more than once.
-
Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both.
-
I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me
-
Our lives are ruled by impermanence. The challenge is how to create something of enduring value within the context of our impermanent lives. Soka Gakkai Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
-
We can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home!
-
That humanity and sincerity which dispose men to resist injustice and tyranny render them unfit to cope with the cunning and power of those who are opposed to them. The friends of liberty trust to the professions of others because they are themselves sincere, and endeavour to secure the public good with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who have no regard to anything but their own unprincipled ends, and stick at nothing to accomplish them.
-
The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.
-
He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan.