William Hazlitt Quotes
-
Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.
-
There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Who likes not his business, his business likes not him.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.
-
Grace in women has more effect than beauty.
-
Knowledge is pleasure as well as power.
-
A King (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.
-
A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.
-
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.
-
He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.
-
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.
-
No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
-
Prejudice is the child of ignorance.
-
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.
-
Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.
-
In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views; as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.
-
To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.
-
It is well there is no one without fault; for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to s different species.
-
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.
-
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.