William Hazlitt Quotes
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Grace in women has more effect than beauty.
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A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.
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Wrong dressed out in pride, pomp, and circumstance has more attraction than abstract right.
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As is our confidence, so is our capacity.
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We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.
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A really great man has always an idea of something greater than himself.
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Men of gravity are intellectual stammerers, whose thoughts move slowly.
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We prefer ourselves to others, only because we a have more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person's.
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Silence is one great art of conversation.
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There are persons who are never easy unless they are putting your books and papers in order--that is, according to their notions of the matter--and hide things lest they should be lost, where neither the owner nor anybody else can find them. This is a sort of magpie faculty. If anything is left where you want it, it is called litter. There is a pedantry in housewifery, as well as in the gravest concerns. Abraham Tucker complained that whenever his maid servant had been in his library, he could not see comfortably to work again for several days.
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It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, anymore than they grow stronger or healthier or honest.
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Man is an intellectual animal, and therefore an everlasting contradiction to himself. His senses centre in himself, his ideas reach to the ends of the universe; so that he is torn in pieces between the two, without a possibility of its ever being otherwise.
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Dandyism is a species of genius.
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Time,--the most independent of all things.
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From the height from which the great look down on the world all the rest of mankind seem equal.
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Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.
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The seat of knowledge is in the head; of wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong, if we do not feel right.
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Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.
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Envy is littleness of soul.
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Any woman may act the part of a coquette successfully who has the reputation without the scruples of modesty. If a woman passes the bounds of propriety for our sakes, and throws herself unblushingly at our heads, we conclude it is either from a sudden and violent liking, or from extraordinary merit on our parts, either of which is enough to turn any man's head who has a single spark of gallantry or vanity in his composition.
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Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.
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There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things-books, pictures and the face of nature.
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Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
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The soul of dispatch is decision.