William Hazlitt Quotes
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Keep your misfortunes to yourself.
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People are not soured by misfortune, but by the reception they meet with in it.
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Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.
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He who does nothing renders himself incapable of doing any thing; but while we are executing any work, we are preparing and qualifying ourselves to undertake another.
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A man in love prefers his passion to every other consideration, and is fonder of his mistress than he is of virtue. Should she prove vicious, she makes vice lovely in his eyes.
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Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as the detecting another in an untruth. It strikes at the root of our confidence ever after.
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We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.
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Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it.
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The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne from a sort of dignity belonging to them.
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Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.
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Truth from the mouth of an honest man and severity from a good-natured man have a double effect.
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Cowardice is not synonymous with prudence. It often happens that the better part of discretion is valor.
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The insolence of the vulgar is in proportion to their ignorance. They treat everything with contempt which they do not understand.
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Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.
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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter, we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.
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Despair swallows up cowardice.
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Landscape painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy.
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Learning is its own exceeding great reward; and at the period of which we speak, it bore other fruits, not unworthy of it.
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The expression of a gentleman's face is not so much that of refinement, as of flexibility, not of sensibility and enthusiasm as of indifference; it argues presence of mind rather than enlargement of ideas.
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An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.
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The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.
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Of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise; of all arguments the most unanswerable.
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One said he wondered that leather was not dearer than any other thing. Being demanded a reason: because, saith he, it is more stood upon than any other thing in the world.
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I'm not smart, but I like to observe. Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.