William Hazlitt Quotes
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Pride erects a little kingdom of its own, and acts as sovereign in it.
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One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.
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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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An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.
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Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination.
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People do not persist in their vices because they are not weary of them, but because they cannot leave them off. It is the nature of vice to leave us no resource but in itself.
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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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It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.
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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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Those who object to wit are envious of it.
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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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In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide from feeling, and not from reason. If we were obliged to enter into a theoretical deliberation on every occasion before we act, life would be at a stand, and Art would be impracticable.
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The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.
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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 temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men.
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The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out.
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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 greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.
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Familiarity confounds all traits of distinction; interest and prejudice take away the power of judging.
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Abuse is an indirect species of homage.
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It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed every one is at a play.
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A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.
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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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All is without form and void. Someone said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing and very like.