William Hazlitt Quotes
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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.
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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 true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.
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Habit is necessary to give power.
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Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity.
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...greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into itself.
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The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life.
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There is no flattery so adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent.
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To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous; or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.
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The title of Ultracrepidarian critics has been given to those persons who find fault with small and insignificant details.
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Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.
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The last sort I shall mention are verbal critics - mere word-catchers, fellows that pick out a word in a sentence and a sentence in a volume, and tell you it is wrong. The title of Ultra-Crepidarian critics has been given to a variety of this species.
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It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.
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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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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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The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.
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Hope is the best possession.
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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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When one can do better than everyone else in the same walk, one does not make any very painful exertions to outdo oneself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.
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We would willingly, and without remorse, sacrifice not only the present moment, but all the interval (no matter how long) that separates us from any favorite object.
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He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.
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We must be doing something to be happy.
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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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Liberty is the only true riches: of all the rest we are at once the masters and the slaves.