William Hazlitt Quotes
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The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear great ones as well as we can.
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Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know.
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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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Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both.
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An honest man is respected by all parties.
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A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn.
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He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.
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The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.
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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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Spleen can subsist on any kind of food.
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A thought must tell at once, or not at all.
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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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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.
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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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When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.
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We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into a union by all the intolerance in the world. If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary rules.
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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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Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs. The heaviest charge we can bring against the general texture of society is that it is commonplace. Our fancied superiority to others is in some one thing which we think most of because we excel in it, or have paid most attention to it; whilst we overlook their superiority to us in something else which they set equal and exclusive store by.
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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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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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The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.
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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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They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
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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.