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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The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.
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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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We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
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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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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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If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.
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We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.
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The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out.
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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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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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He who would see old Hoghton right Must view it by the pale moonlight.
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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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It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.
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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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One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.
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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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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 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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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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An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.
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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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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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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.