William Hazlitt Quotes
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Man is a poetical animal, and delights in fiction.
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We are not hypocrites in our sleep.
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Common sense, to most people, is nothing more than their own opinions.
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Silence is one great art of conversation. He is not a fool who knows when to hold his tongue; and a person may gain credit for sense, eloquence, wit, who merely says nothing to lessen the opinion which others have of these qualities in themselves.
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To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.
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The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others.
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Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement; it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.
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The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle 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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Women never reason, and therefore they are (comparatively) seldom wrong.
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It is better to desire than to enjoy, to love than to be loved.
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The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.
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To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.
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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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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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If we are long absent from our friends, we forget them; if we are constantly with them, we despise them.
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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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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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You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion.
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Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps.
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Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.
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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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The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.
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Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.