William Hazlitt Quotes
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We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.
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The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.
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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.
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The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out.
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The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.
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A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.
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There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which, we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect, the confidence of others who too apparently distrusts himself.
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He who would see old Hoghton right Must view it by the pale moonlight.
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We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
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An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.
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Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.
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One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.
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We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically.
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We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.
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Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
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Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge.
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If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.
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I am proud up to the point of equality; everything above or below that appears to me arrant impertinence or abject meanness.
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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.
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It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.
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Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may, he will only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.
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Liberty is the only true riches: of all the rest we are at once the masters and the slaves.
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I'm not smart, but I like to observe. Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.
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Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly.