Top 617 Quotes & Sayings by William Hazlitt - Page 2
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English critic William Hazlitt.
Last updated on December 25, 2024.
The public have neither shame or gratitude.
One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.
Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.
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.
It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.
To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.
Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.
I'm not smart, but I like to observe. Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.
The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.
No truly great person ever thought themselves so.
If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.
We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.
There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our friends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.
Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.
To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead.
There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.
To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.
The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.
The most learned are often the most narrow minded.
The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favor.
Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.
To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.
If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.
No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage.
Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.
Rules and models destroy genius and art.
The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.
We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.
Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.
Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.
The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.
The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.
We can scarcely hate anyone that we know.
Those who can command themselves command others.
The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.
The busier we are the more leisure we have.
There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.
We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
There is nothing good to be had in the country, or if there is, they will not let you have it.
Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.
To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.
The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.
I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.
A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.
The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.
Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
The incentive to ambition is the love of power.
To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.
Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.
We must be doing something to be happy.
The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors.
Good temper is one of the greatest preservers of the features.
Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.
Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.
We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.
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