William Hazlitt Quotes
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Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities we possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.
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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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To speak highly of one with whom we are intimate is a species of egotism. Our modesty as well as our jealousy teaches us caution on this subject.
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Time,--the most independent of all things.
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Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.
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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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Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
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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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Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.
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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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Common sense, to most people, is nothing more than their own opinions.
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Grace in women has more effect than beauty.
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As is our confidence, so is our capacity.
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A man who is determined never to move out of the beaten road cannot lose his way.
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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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A really great man has always an idea of something greater than himself.
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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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Men of gravity are intellectual stammerers, whose thoughts move slowly.
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Genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength.
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True friendship is self-love at second-hand.
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We had rather do anything than acknowledge the merit of another if we can help it. We cannot bear a superior or an equal. Hence ridicule is sure to prevail over truth, for the malice of mankind, thrown into the scale, gives the casting weight.
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The love of fame is too high and delicate a feeling in the mind to be mixed up with realities, it is a solitary abstraction. * * * A name "fast anchored in the deep abyss of time" is like a star twinkling in the firmament, cold, silent, distant, but eternal and sublime; and our transmitting one to posterity is as if we should contemplate our translation to the skies.
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Rules and models destroy genius and art.
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One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole or ace, than if one has never had a chance of winning it.