William Hazlitt Quotes
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The secret of the difficulties of those people who make a great deal of money, and yet are always in want of it, is this-they throw it away as soon as they get it on the first whim or extravagance that strikes them, and have nothing left to meet ordinary expenses or discharge old debts.
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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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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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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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From the height from which the great look down on the world all the rest of mankind seem equal.
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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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Those who are pleased with the fewest things know the least, as those who are pleased with everything know nothing.
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Genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength.
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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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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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No man can thoroughly master more than one art or science.
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Gallantry to women - the sure road to their favor - is nothing but the appearance of extreme devotion to all their wants and wishes, a delight in their satisfaction, and a confidence in yourself as being able to contribute toward it
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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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Wrong dressed out in pride, pomp, and circumstance has more attraction than abstract right.
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I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it.
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Poverty, labor, and calamity are not without their luxuries, which the rich, the indolent, and the fortunate in vain seek for.
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No young man ever thinks he shall die.
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The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.
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Wherever the Government does not emanate...from the people, the principle of the Government, the esprit de corps, the point of honour, in all those connected with it, and raised by it to privileges above the law and above humanity, will be hatred to the people.
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Natural affection is a prejudice; for though we have cause to love our nearest connections better than others, we have no reason to think them better than others.
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Man is an intellectual animal, and therefore an everlasting contradiction to himself. His senses centre in himself, his ideas reach to the ends of the universe; so that he is torn in pieces between the two, without a possibility of its ever being otherwise.
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A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.
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We prefer ourselves to others, only because we a have more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person's.
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Kings ought never to be seen upon the stage. In the abstract, they are very disagreeable characters: it is only while living that they are 'the best of kings'. It is their power, their splendour, it is the apprehension of the personal consequences of their favour or their hatred that dazzles the imagination and suspends the judgement of their favourites or their vassals; but death cancels the bond of allegiance and of interest; and seen AS THEY WERE, their power and their pretensions look monstrous and ridiculous.