William Hazlitt Quotes
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Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood.
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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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A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn.
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The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.
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Spleen can subsist on any kind of food.
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Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization.
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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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It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
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The way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it.
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To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.
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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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There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself.
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The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.
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The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame.
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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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We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.
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Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.
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When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.
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A wise traveler never despises his own country.
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Political truth is libel; religious truth, blasphemy.
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If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power.
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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.
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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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It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.