William Hazlitt Quotes
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They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
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The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science is the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
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Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.
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Those who can command themselves command others.
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The fear of punishment may be necessary to the suppression of vice; but it also suspends the finer motives of virtue.
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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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The affected modesty of most women is a decoy for the generous, the delicate, and unsuspecting; while the artful, the bold, and unfeeling either see or break through its slender disguises.
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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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Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.
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The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way ... an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.
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The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice.
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Envy is littleness of soul.
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Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference.
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The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud.
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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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The soil of friendship is worn out with constant use. Habit may still attach us to each other, but we feel ourselves fettered by it. Old friends might be compared to old married people without the tie of children.
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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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Our notions with respect to the importance of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery. The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but of our passions.
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Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.
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We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues.
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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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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.
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He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves.
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To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.