William Hazlitt Quotes
-
Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.
-
The wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest yearning after happiness; and to desire is in some sense to enjoy.
-
You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion.
-
But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.
-
Mankind are so ready to bestow their admiration on the dead, because the latter do not hear it, or because it gives no pleasure to the objects of it. Even fame is the offspring of envy.
-
A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.
-
Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement; it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.
-
When I take up a book I have read before, I know what to expect; the satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. I shake hands with, and look our old tried and valued friend in the face,--compare notes and chat the hour away.
-
The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.
-
A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.
-
Good temper is an estate for life.
-
It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
-
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.
-
A man is a hypocrite only when he affects to take a delight in what he does not feel, not because he takes a perverse delight in opposite things.
-
Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity.
-
The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.
-
Humanity is to be met with in a den of robbers.
-
Spleen can subsist on any kind of food.
-
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.
-
He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan.
-
The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors. The first he does not admit of - the last he does not concern himself about.
-
The incentive to ambition is the love of power.
-
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.
-
The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods.