William Hazlitt Quotes
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Habit is necessary to give power.
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Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.
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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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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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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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Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him.
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Abuse is an indirect species of homage.
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There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.
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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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Nothing precludes sympathy so much as a perfect indifference to it
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Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken
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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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Those only deserve a monument who do not need one; that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.
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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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Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
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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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Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.
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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 have the largest hearts have the soundest understandings; and they are the truest philosophers who can forget themselves.
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It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed every one is at a play.
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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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We would willingly, and without remorse, sacrifice not only the present moment, but all the interval (no matter how long) that separates us from any favorite object.
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Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity.
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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.