William Hazlitt Quotes
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True friendship is self-love at second hand; where, as in a flattering mirror we may see our virtues magnified and our errors softened, and where we may fancy our opinion of ourselves confirmed by an impartial and faithful witness.
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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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Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.
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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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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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A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill, which are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or trophy of themselves without them
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Wrong dressed out in pride, pomp, and circumstance has more attraction than abstract right.
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Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment; hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had and have no wish for.
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It might be argued, that to be a knave is the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary to be a learned man.
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Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others!
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Who likes not his business, his business likes not him.
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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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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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First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.
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Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.
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We learn to curb our will and keep our overt actions within the bounds of humanity, long before we can subdue our sentiments and imaginations to the same mild tone.
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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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True modesty and true pride are much the same thing: both consist in setting a just value on ourselves - neither more nor less.
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The soul of dispatch is decision.
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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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Time,--the most independent of all things.
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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 is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying on itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things.
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The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud.