William Hazlitt Quotes
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The worst old age is that of the mind.
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Women never reason, and therefore they are (comparatively) seldom wrong.
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There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amends for everything. To be young is to be as one of the Immortals.
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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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Words are the only things that last for ever.
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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 look of a gentleman is little else than the reflection of the looks of the world.
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The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice.
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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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The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.
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The affected modesty of most women is a decoy for the generous, the delicate, and unsuspecting; while the artful, the bold, and unfeeling either see or break through its slender disguises.
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The confined air of a metropolis is hurtful to the minds and bodies of those who have never lived out of it. It is impure, stagnant--without breathing-space to allow a larger view of ourselves or others--and gives birth to a puny, sickly, unwholesome, and degenerate race of beings.
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Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.
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It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.
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We all wear some disguise, make some professions, use some artifice, to set ourselves off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom.
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Reflection makes men cowards.
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Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass.
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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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Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.
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Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.
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A certain excess of animal spirits with thoughtless good-humor will often make more enemies than the most deliberate spite and ill-nature, which is on its guard, and strikes with caution and safety.
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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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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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We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.