William Hazlitt Quotes
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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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Words are the only things that last for ever.
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To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
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But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.
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The devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate; he supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him.
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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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Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength. There is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage.
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Books wind into the heart.
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Our notions with respect to the importance of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery. The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but of our passions.
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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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Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement; it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.
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The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.
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The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.
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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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I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.
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The fear of punishment may be necessary to the suppression of vice; but it also suspends the finer motives of virtue.
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Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority; natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself.
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The surest hindrance of success is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the judgment of the public. He who is determined not to be satisfied with anything short of perfection will never do anything to please himself or others.
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Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.
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If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.
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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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Man is a poetical animal, and delights in fiction.
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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 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.