William Hazlitt Quotes
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Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.
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If our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as little note of them as the dial does of those that are clouded.
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There is nothing more to be esteemed than a manly firmness and decision of character.
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Well I've had a happy life.
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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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When the imagination is continually led to the brink of vice by a system of terror and denunciations, people fling themselves over the precipice from the mere dread of falling.
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Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.
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The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.
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The only true retirement is that of the heart; the only true leisure is the repose of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference whether they are young or old; and they die as they have lived, with graceful resignation.
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Principle is a passion for truth.
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People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking.
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Believe all the good you can of everyone. Do not measure others by yourself. If they have advantages which you have not, let your liberality keep pace with their good fortune. Envy no one, and you need envy no one.
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We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.
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Genius is native to the soil where it grows — is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun — and is not a hot - house plant or an exotic.
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No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
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Actors are the only honest hypocrites.
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We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into a union by all the intolerance in the world. If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary rules.
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The great requisite for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination.
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The way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it.
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The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, "No. There was a fire in the room."
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It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
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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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Learning is its own exceeding great reward.
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Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.