William Hazlitt Quotes
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Those who can command themselves command others.
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They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
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But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.
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The public have neither shame or gratitude.
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Women never reason, and therefore they are (comparatively) seldom wrong.
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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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A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.
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He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan.
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It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, anymore than they grow stronger or healthier or honest.
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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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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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We are not hypocrites in our sleep.
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Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman; elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman; dignity is proper to noblemen; and majesty to kings.
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The more we do, the more we can do.
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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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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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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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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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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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Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.
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We had rather do anything than acknowledge the merit of another if we can help it. We cannot bear a superior or an equal. Hence ridicule is sure to prevail over truth, for the malice of mankind, thrown into the scale, gives the casting weight.
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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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The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.
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Grace in women has more effect than beauty. We sometimes see a certain fine self-possession, an habitual voluptuousness of character, which reposes on its own sensations and derives pleasure from all around it, that is more irresistible than any other attraction. There is an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, "in their eyes, in their arms, and their hands, and their face," which robs us of ourselves, and draws us by a secret sympathy towards them.