William Hazlitt Quotes
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The vain man makes a merit of misfortune, and triumphs in his disgrace.
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If we use no ceremony towards others, we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect.
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The number of objects we see from living in a large city amuses the mind like a perpetual raree-show, without supplying it with any ideas.
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A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn.
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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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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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An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.
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Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner - and then to thinking! ... I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.
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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.
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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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A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.
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If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.
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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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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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The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.
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A woman's vanity is interested in making the object of her choice the god of her idolatry.
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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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Malice often takes the garb of truth.
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Like a rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of going home, or that it will soon be night.
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Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.
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Hope is the best possession.
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A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.
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Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.
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A felon could plead "benefit of clergy" and be saved by [reading aloud] what was aptly enough termed the "neck verse", which was very usually the Miserere mei of Psalm 51.