William Hazlitt Quotes
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To great evils we submit, we resent little provocations.
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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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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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A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.
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No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.
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Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.
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We have more faith in a well-written romance while we are reading it than in common history. The vividness of the representations in the one case more than counterbalances the mere knowledge of the truth of facts in the other.
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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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Tears may be considered as the natural and involuntary resource of the mind overcome by some sudden and violent emotion, before ithas had time to reconcile its feelings to the change in circumstances: while laughter may be defined to be the same sort of convulsive and involuntary movement, occasioned by mere sur prise or contrast (in the absence of any more serious emotion), before it has time to reconcile its belief to contradictory appearances.
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Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere.
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He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.
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Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.
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There is a quiet repose and steadiness about the happiness of age, if the life has been well spent. Its feebleness is not painful. The nervous system has lost its acuteness. But, in mature years we feel that a burn, a scald, a cut, is more tolerable than it was in the sensitive period of youth.
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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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We uniformly applaud what is right and condemn what is wrong, when it costs us nothing but the sentiment.
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There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.
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There is nothing more to be esteemed than a manly firmness and decision of character.
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Nothing precludes sympathy so much as a perfect indifference to it
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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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Abuse is an indirect species of homage.
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Learning is its own exceeding great reward.
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If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.
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The great requisite for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination.
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That humanity and sincerity which dispose men to resist injustice and tyranny render them unfit to cope with the cunning and power of those who are opposed to them. The friends of liberty trust to the professions of others because they are themselves sincere, and endeavour to secure the public good with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who have no regard to anything but their own unprincipled ends, and stick at nothing to accomplish them.