William Hazlitt Quotes
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We talk little when we do not talk about ourselves.
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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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However we may flatter ourselves to the contrary, our friends think no higher of us than the world do. They see us through the jaundiced or distrustful eyes of others. They may know better, but their feelings are governed by popular prejudice. Nay, they are more shy of us (when under a cloud) than even strangers; for we involve them in a common disgrace, or compel them to embroil themselves in continual quarrels and disputes in our defense.
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We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.
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Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.
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A really great man has always an idea of something greater than himself.
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Painting for a whole morning gives one as excellent an appetite for one's dinner, as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his by riding over Banstead Downs.
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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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The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.
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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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Elegance is something more than ease; it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling, spirited yet delicate.
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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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To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
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Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.
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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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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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They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
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I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.
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No truly great person ever thought themselves so.
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Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
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Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others.
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The multitude who require to be led, still hate their leaders.
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The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice.
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Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement; it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.