William Hazlitt Quotes
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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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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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Knowledge is pleasure as well as power.
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Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.
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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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It is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying on itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things.
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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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Avarice is the miser's dream, as fame is the poet's.
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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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Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.
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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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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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I am then never less alone than when alone
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A King (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.
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No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
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Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.
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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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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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Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.
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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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Grace in women has more effect than beauty.
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Who likes not his business, his business likes not him.
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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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To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.