William Hazlitt Quotes
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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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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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Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others, who feel that the world has done them justice.
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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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All is without form and void. Someone said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing and very like.
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There is nothing more to be esteemed than a manly firmness and decision of character.
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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 garb of religion is the best cloak for power.
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I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.
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Principle is a passion for truth.
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Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.
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Horus non numero nisi serenas (I count only the sunny hours).
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The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.
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A mighty stream of tendency.
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The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desires of the soul, and of which it never tires.
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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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An honest man is respected by all parties.
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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.
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We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
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No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
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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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When I take up a book I have read before, I know what to expect; the satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. I shake hands with, and look our old tried and valued friend in the face,--compare notes and chat the hour away.
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It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed every one is at a play.
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Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood.