William Hazlitt Quotes
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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 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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Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not, and to do what we cannot.
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A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles.
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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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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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Those who are pleased with the fewest things know the least, as those who are pleased with everything know nothing.
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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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From the height from which the great look down on the world all the rest of mankind seem equal.
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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 man can thoroughly master more than one art or science.
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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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Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence, and see all things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and hope; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They have not been "hurt by the archers", nor has the iron entered their souls. The world has no hand on them.
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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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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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The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.
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It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.
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There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.
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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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The present is an age of talkers, and not of doers; and the reason is, that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and dote on past achievement.
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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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Wrong dressed out in pride, pomp, and circumstance has more attraction than abstract right.
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The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading while we are young. I have had as much of this pleasure perhaps as any one.
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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.