William Hazlitt Quotes
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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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We talk little when we do not talk about ourselves.
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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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We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues.
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Charity, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Next to putting it in a bank, men like to squander their superfluous wealth on those to whom it is sure to be doing the least possible good.
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The rule for traveling abroad is to take our common sense with us, and leave our prejudices behind.
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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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You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion.
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The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.
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No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.
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We are not hypocrites in our sleep.
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Political truth is libel; religious truth, blasphemy.
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The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.
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It is better to desire than to enjoy, to love than to be loved.
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Man is a poetical animal, and delights in fiction.
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He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery.
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The objects that we have known in better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our affections, and give us strength to await our future lot.
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Death puts an end to rivalship and competition. The dead can boast no advantage over us, nor can we triumph over them.
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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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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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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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I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.
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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 soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.