William Hazlitt Quotes
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Persons without education certainly do not want either acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns themselves, or in things immediately within their observation; but they have no power of abstraction, no general standard of taste, or scale of opinion. They see their objects always near, and never in the horizon. Hence arises that egotism which has been remarked as the characteristic of self-taught men.
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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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The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty.
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If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power.
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A hair in the head is worth two in the brush.
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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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I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me
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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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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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The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.
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The public have neither shame or gratitude.
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When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.
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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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They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
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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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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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A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof.
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A wise traveler never despises his own country.
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If we are long absent from our friends, we forget them; if we are constantly with them, we despise them.
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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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The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.
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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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A thought must tell at once, or not at all.
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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.