William Hazlitt Quotes
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The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.
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The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.
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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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The multitude who require to be led, still hate their leaders.
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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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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.
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General principles are not the less true or important because from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it.
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They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
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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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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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Whatever excites the spirit of contradiction is capable of producing the last effects of heroism; which is only the highest pitch of obstinacy, in a good or bad cause, in wisdom or folly.
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As is our confidence, so is our capacity.
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The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.
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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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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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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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We are not satisfied to be right, unless we can prove others to be quite wrong.
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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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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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Whatever interests is interesting.
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The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.
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Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference.
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With women, the great business of life is love; and they generally make a mistake in it. They consult neither the heart nor the head, but are led away by mere humour and fancy. If instead of a companion for life, they had to choose a partner in a country-dance or to trifle away an hour with, their mode of calculation would be right. They tie their true-lover's knot with idle, thoughtless haste, while the institutions of society render it indissoluble.