William Hazlitt Quotes
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The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty.
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A hair in the head is worth two in the brush.
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The public have neither shame or gratitude.
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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.
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There are some persons who never succeed from being too indolent to undertake anything; and others who regularly fail, because the instant they find success in their power, they grow indifferent, and give over the attempt.
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There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.
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I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me
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If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power.
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They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
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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 art of pleasing consists in being pleased.
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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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He who lives wisely to himself and his own heart looks at the busy world through the loopholes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray.
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Anyone who has passed though the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.
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When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.
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The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.
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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 soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.
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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 youth is better than the old age of friendship.
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To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.
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Reflection brakes men cowards. There is no object that can be put in competition with life, unless it is viewed through the medium of passion, and we are hurried away by the impulse of the moment.
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A thought must tell at once, or not at all.
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There is a quiet repose and steadiness about the happiness of age, if the life has been well spent. Its feebleness is not painful. The nervous system has lost its acuteness. But, in mature years we feel that a burn, a scald, a cut, is more tolerable than it was in the sensitive period of youth.