William Hazlitt Quotes
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It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed every one is at a play.
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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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They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.
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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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The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.
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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 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 greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.
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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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Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.
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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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Familiarity confounds all traits of distinction; interest and prejudice take away the power of judging.
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A great man la an abstraction of some one excellence; but whoever fancies himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of excellence or defect of himself or others.
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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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The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously, and those who have produced immortal works have done so without knowing how or why.
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Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.
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Learning is its own exceeding great reward; and at the period of which we speak, it bore other fruits, not unworthy of it.
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To-day kings, to-marrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing.
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He who would see old Hoghton right Must view it by the pale moonlight.
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Actors are the only honest hypocrites.
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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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Pride goes before a fall, they say, And yet we often find, The folks who throw all pride away Most often fall behind.
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I have a much greater ambition to be the best racket player than the best prose writer.
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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.