William Hazlitt Quotes
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The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.
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There is an unseemly exposure of the mind, as well as of the body.
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To the proud the slightest repulse or disappointment is the last indignity.
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One said he wondered that leather was not dearer than any other thing. Being demanded a reason: because, saith he, it is more stood upon than any other thing in the world.
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A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn.
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Truth from the mouth of an honest man and severity from a good-natured man have a double effect.
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I do not think that what is called Love at first sight is so great an absurdity as it is sometimes imagined to be. We generally make up our minds beforehand to the sort of person we should like, grave or gay, black, brown, or fair; with golden tresses or raven locks; - and when we meet with a complete example of the qualities we admire, the bargain is soon struck.
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To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
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A distinction has been made between acuteness and subtlety of understanding. This might be illustrated by saying that acuteness consists in taking up the points or solid atoms, subtlety in feeling the air of truth.
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The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame.
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Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.
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You will hear more good things on the outside of a stagecoach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university.
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The expression of a gentleman's face is not so much that of refinement, as of flexibility, not of sensibility and enthusiasm as of indifference; it argues presence of mind rather than enlargement of ideas.
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Malice often takes the garb of truth.
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Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination.
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There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.
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Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The learned are mere literary drudges.
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A great man la an abstraction of some one excellence; but whoever fancies himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of excellence or defect of himself or others.
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Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves.
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Sincerity has to do with the connexion between our words and thoughts, and not between our beliefs and actions.
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Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism ... tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.
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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter, we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.
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Learning is its own exceeding great reward; and at the period of which we speak, it bore other fruits, not unworthy of it.
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The silence of a friend commonly amounts to treachery. His not daring to say anything in our behalf implies a tacit censure.