William Hazlitt Quotes
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The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself; that is impatient of all limit; that (as flame bends to flame) strives to link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur; to enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest manner.
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Habit is necessary to give power.
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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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Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly.
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Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity.
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Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.
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...greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into itself.
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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 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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We trifle with, make sport of, and despise those who are attached to us, and follow those that fly from us.
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We must be doing something to be happy.
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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 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.
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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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The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.
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If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.
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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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The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.
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What I mean by living to one's self is living in the world, as in it, not of it.
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I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth... I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them.
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Genius is native to the soil where it grows — is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun — and is not a hot - house plant or an exotic.
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There is no flattery so adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent.
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Those only deserve a monument who do not need one; that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.