William Hazlitt Quotes
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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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Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
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A full-dressed ecclesiastic is a sort of go-cart of divinity; an ethical automaton. A clerical prig is, in general, a very dangerous as well as contemptible character. The utmost that those who thus habitually confound their opinions and sentiments with the outside coverings of their bodies can aspire to, is a negative and neutral character, like wax-work figures, where the dress is done as much to the life as the man, and where both are respectable pieces of pasteboard, or harmless compositions of fleecy hosiery.
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There is evil poured upon the earth from the overflowings of corruption-- Sickness, and poverty, and pain, and guilt, and madness, and sorrow; But, as the water from a fountain riseth and sinketh to its level, Ceaselessly toileth justice to equalize the lots of men.
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Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.
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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 only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.
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Envy is the deformed and distorted offspring of egotism; and when we reflect on the strange and disproportioned character of the parent, we cannot wonder at the perversity and waywardness of the child.
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We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves.
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Good temper is one of the great preservers of the features.
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We are not satisfied to be right, unless we can prove others to be quite wrong.
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To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
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The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice.
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Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.
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The soul of dispatch is decision.
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Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference.
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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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Men of the greatest genius are not always the most prodigal of their encomiums. But then it is when their range of power is confined, and they have in fact little perception, except of their own particular kind of excellence.
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There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amends for everything. To be young is to be as one of the Immortals.
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Time,--the most independent of all things.