William Hazlitt Quotes
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Asleep, nobody is a hypocrite
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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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We can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home!
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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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We are not hypocrites in our sleep.
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We talk little when we do not talk about ourselves.
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If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.
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Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?
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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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A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.
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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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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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A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.
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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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If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.
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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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Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference.
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The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.
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We go on a journey to be free of all impediments; to leave ourselves behind much more than to get rid of others
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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 origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science is the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
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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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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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Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.