William Hazlitt Quotes
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If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will -the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.
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The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.
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The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors. The first he does not admit of - the last he does not concern himself about.
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Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not, and to do what we cannot.
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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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They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
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Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.
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What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.
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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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There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary.
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The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.
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The confined air of a metropolis is hurtful to the minds and bodies of those who have never lived out of it. It is impure, stagnant--without breathing-space to allow a larger view of ourselves or others--and gives birth to a puny, sickly, unwholesome, and degenerate race of beings.
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Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols -- it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.
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Tears may be considered as the natural and involuntary resource of the mind overcome by some sudden and violent emotion, before ithas had time to reconcile its feelings to the change in circumstances: while laughter may be defined to be the same sort of convulsive and involuntary movement, occasioned by mere sur prise or contrast (in the absence of any more serious emotion), before it has time to reconcile its belief to contradictory appearances.
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He who draws upon his own resources easily comes to an end of his wealth.
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The more a man writes, the more he can write.
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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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The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.
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The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.
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True modesty and true pride are much the same thing: both consist in setting a just value on ourselves - neither more nor less.
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The more we do, the more we can do.
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Whatever interests is interesting.
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Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.
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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.