William Hazlitt Quotes
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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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When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.
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You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
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A hair in the head is worth two in the brush.
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Human life may be regarded as a succession of frontispieces. The way to be satisfied is never to look back.
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Words are the only things that last for ever.
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The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.
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Women never reason, and therefore they are (comparatively) seldom wrong.
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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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Painting gives the object itself; poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself; poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it.
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People addicted to secrecy are so without knowing why; they are not so for cause, but for secrecy's sake.
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Man is a poetical animal, and delights in fiction.
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Power is pleasure; and pleasure sweetens pain.
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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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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 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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The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty.
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It [will-making] is the latest opportunity we have of exercising the natural perversity of the disposition. This last act of our lives seldom belies the former tenor of them for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so (in settling accounts with those who are so unmannerly as to survive us) as to do as little good, and to plague and disappoint as many people, as possible.
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No truly great person ever thought themselves so.
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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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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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Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.
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The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.