William Hazlitt Quotes
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A taste for liberal art is necessary to complete the character of a gentleman, Science alone is hard and mechanical. It exercises the understanding upon things out of ourselves, while it leaves the affections unemployed, or engrossed with our own immediate, narrow interests.
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I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me besides what interferes with my own ease and interest. I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many enemies and few friends; for the public know nothing of well-wishers, and keep a wary eye on those who would reform them.
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Genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength.
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Avarice is the miser's dream, as fame is the poet's.
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Envy is littleness of soul.
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Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.
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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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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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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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He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.
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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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The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.
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Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.
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There is nothing good to be had in the country, or if there is, they will not let you have it.
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There is room enough in human life to crowd almost every art and science in it. If we pass ""no day without a line""-visit no place without the company of a book-we may with ease fill libraries or empty them of their contents. The more we do, the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.
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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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Without life there can be no action — no objects of pursuit — no restless desires — no tormenting passions. Hence it is that we fondly cling to it — that we dread its termination as the close, not of enjoyment, but of hope.
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To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.
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Prejudice is the child of ignorance.
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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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Faith is necessary to victory.
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Popularity disarms envy in well-disposed minds. Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others who feel that the world has done them justice. When success has not this effect in opening the mind, it is a sign that it has been ill deserved.
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The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.
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Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.