William Hazlitt Quotes
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Poverty is the test of civility and the touchstone of friendship.
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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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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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Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.
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Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.
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Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly.
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Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity.
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The vain man makes a merit of misfortune, and triumphs in his disgrace.
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Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.
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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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Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.
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To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.
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...greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into itself.
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If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.
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Humour is the making others act or talk absurdly and unconsciously; wit is the pointing out and ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more or less ill-nature.
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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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If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.
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There is an unseemly exposure of the mind, as well as of the body.
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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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As we are poetical in our natures, so we delight in fable.
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One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey; but I like to go by myself.
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To die is only to be as we were before we were born; yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance, in contemplating this last idea.
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A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage.
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We prefer a person with vivacity and high spirits, though bordering upon insolence, to the timid and pusillanimous; we are fonder of wit joined to malice than of dullness without it.