William Hazlitt Quotes
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To great evils we submit, we resent little provocations.
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The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.
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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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The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.
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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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There is no flattery so adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent.
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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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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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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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I am always afraid of a fool. One cannot be sure that he is not a knave as well.
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A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common.
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To die is only to be as we were before we were born; yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance, in contemplating this last idea.
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People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.
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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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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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Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs. The heaviest charge we can bring against the general texture of society is that it is commonplace. Our fancied superiority to others is in some one thing which we think most of because we excel in it, or have paid most attention to it; whilst we overlook their superiority to us in something else which they set equal and exclusive store by.
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Those who object to wit are envious of it.
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Like a rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of going home, or that it will soon be night.
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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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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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The corpse of friendship is not worth embalming.
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The amiable is the voluptuous in expression or manner. The sense of pleasure in ourselves is that which excites it in others; or, the art of pleasing is to seem pleased.
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The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.
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The public is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice.