William Hazlitt Quotes
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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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Persons who undertake to pry into, or cleanse out all the filth of a common sewer, either cannot have very nice noses, or will soon lose them.
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The more a man writes, the more he can write.
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We can scarcely hate anyone that we know.
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There is evil poured upon the earth from the overflowings of corruption-- Sickness, and poverty, and pain, and guilt, and madness, and sorrow; But, as the water from a fountain riseth and sinketh to its level, Ceaselessly toileth justice to equalize the lots of men.
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He who draws upon his own resources easily comes to an end of his wealth.
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What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.
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Rules and models destroy genius and art.
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Our lives are ruled by impermanence. The challenge is how to create something of enduring value within the context of our impermanent lives. Soka Gakkai Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
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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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We are all of us, more or less, the slaves of opinion.
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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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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.
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Those who wish to forget painful thoughts do well to absent themselves for a while from, the ties and objects that recall them; but we can be said only to fulfill our destiny in the place that gave us birth.
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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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Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not, and to do what we cannot.
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Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs.
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The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.
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A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles.
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The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.
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Painters... are the most lively observers of what passes in the world about them, and the closest observers of what passes in their own minds.
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The safest kind of praise is to foretell that another will become great in some particular way. It has the greatest show of magnanimity and the least of it in reality.
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We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.
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From the height from which the great look down on the world all the rest of mankind seem equal.