William Hazlitt Quotes
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When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.
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A mighty stream of tendency.
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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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The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice.
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Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know.
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A man who does not endeavour to seem more than he is will generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention to fashion is necessary.
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None but those who are happy in themselves can make others so.
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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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Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man.
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The youth is better than the old age of friendship.
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A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.
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Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference.
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Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.
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The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.
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You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion.
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No truly great person ever thought themselves so.
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The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.
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By despising all that has preceded us, we teach others to despise ourselves.
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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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One said a tooth drawer was a kind of unconscionable trade, because his trade was nothing else but to take away those things whereby every man gets his living.
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Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to our efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap.
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The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science is the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
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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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Power is pleasure; and pleasure sweetens pain.