William Hazlitt Quotes
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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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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.
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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 display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.
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He who would see old Hoghton right Must view it by the pale moonlight.
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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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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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Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken
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Habit is necessary to give power.
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It is only those who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to blood invariably on abstract ideas, that ever feel ennui.
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Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.
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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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The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.
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The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.
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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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Familiarity confounds all traits of distinction; interest and prejudice take away the power of judging.
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Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves.
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The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to ranking spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness.
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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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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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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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He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.
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There is some virtue in almost every vice, except hypocrisy; and even that, while it is a mockery of virtue, is at the same time a compliment to it.
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A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common.