William Hazlitt Quotes
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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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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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The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out.
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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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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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An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.
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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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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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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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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.
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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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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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He who would see old Hoghton right Must view it by the pale moonlight.
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It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.
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If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.
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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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We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.
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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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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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We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
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We must be doing something to be happy.
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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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An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.
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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.