William Hazlitt Quotes
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If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will -the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.
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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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Words are the only things that last for ever.
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To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead.
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The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.
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Humanity is to be met with in a den of robbers.
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The wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest yearning after happiness; and to desire is in some sense to enjoy.
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A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death.
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The incentive to ambition is the love of power.
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Common sense, to most people, is nothing more than their own opinions.
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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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The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods.
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Women never reason, and therefore they are (comparatively) seldom wrong.
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There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things-books, pictures and the face of nature.
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A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.
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The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.
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Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him.
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True modesty and true pride are much the same thing: both consist in setting a just value on ourselves - neither more nor less.
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There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!
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The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.
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Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) - neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.
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Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.
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The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.
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Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.