William Hazlitt Quotes
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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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To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
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The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.
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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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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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Those who object to wit are envious of it.
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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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His hypothesis goes to this - to make the common run of his readers fancy they can do all that can be done by genius, and to make the man of genius believe he can only do what is to be done by mechanical rules and systematic industry. This is not a very feasible scheme; nor is Sir Joshua sufficiently clear and explicit in his reasoning in support of it.
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A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dulness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.
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The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favor.
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The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.
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He who would see old Hoghton right Must view it by the pale moonlight.
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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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To great evils we submit, we resent little provocations.
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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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To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.
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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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Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good – fortune.
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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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All is without form and void. Someone said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing and very like.
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He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.
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The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.
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A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common.
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Habit is necessary to give power.