Top 617 Quotes & Sayings by William Hazlitt - Page 5

None but those who are happy in themselves can make others so.

The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.

Liberty is the only true riches: of all the rest we are at once the masters and the slaves.

People are not soured by misfortune, but by the reception they meet with in it.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit -- or a mask. . . . The foregoing maxim shows the difference between truth and sarcasm.

Painting for a whole morning gives one as excellent an appetite for one's dinner, as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his by riding over Banstead Downs.

A really great man has always an idea of something greater than himself.

Diffidence and awkwardness are antidotes to love.

What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.

We are governed by sympathy; and the extent of our sympathy is determined by that of our sensibility

By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages.

Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both.

The confined air of a metropolis is hurtful to the minds and bodies of those who have never lived out of it. It is impure, stagnant--without breathing-space to allow a larger view of ourselves or others--and gives birth to a puny, sickly, unwholesome, and degenerate race of beings.

He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery.

I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me

In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views; as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.

If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power.

What are the publications that succeed? Those that pretend to teach the public that the persons they have been accustomed unwittingly to look up to as the lights of the earth are no better than themselves.

The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way ... an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.

It might be argued, that to be a knave is the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary to be a learned man.

Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols -- it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.

Familiarity confounds all traits of distinction; interest and prejudice take away the power of judging.

The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.

Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.

In public speaking, we must appeal either to the prejudices of others, or to the love of truth and justice. If we think merely of displaying our own ability, we shall ruin every cause we undertake.

The objects that we have known in better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our affections, and give us strength to await our future lot.

A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.

Pride goes before a fall, they say, And yet we often find, The folks who throw all pride away Most often fall behind.

You are never tired of painting, because you have to set down not what you know already, but what you have just discovered.

To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.

We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.

We are not satisfied to be right, unless we can prove others to be quite wrong.

Spleen can subsist on any kind of food.

The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life.

Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, which never surfeits. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust. Hatred alone is immortal.

Those who have the largest hearts have the soundest understandings; and they are the truest philosophers who can forget themselves.

Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know.

We all wear some disguise, make some professions, use some artifice, to set ourselves off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom.

Those only deserve a monument who do not need one.

The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.

The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.

He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves.

The corpse of friendship is not worth embalming.

Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not enough that a man has great power in himself, he must shew it to all the world in a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid.

From the height from which the great look down on the world all the rest of mankind seem equal.

I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began.

To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.

The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne from a sort of dignity belonging to them.

The assumption of merit is easier, less embarrassing, and more effectual than the actual attainment of it.

That which anyone has been long learning unwillingly, he unlearns with proportional eagerness and haste.

The wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest yearning after happiness; and to desire is in some sense to enjoy.

True modesty and true pride are much the same thing: both consist in setting a just value on ourselves - neither more nor less.

Persons of slender intellectual stamina dread competition, as dwarfs are afraid of being run over in the street.

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.

Natural affection is a prejudice; for though we have cause to love our nearest connections better than others, we have no reason to think them better than others.

We do not attend to the advice of the sage and experienced because we think they are old, forgetting that they once were young and placed in the same situations as ourselves.

The history of mankind is a romance, a mask, a tragedy, constructed upon the principles of POETICAL JUSTICE; it is a noble or royal hunt, in which what is sport to the few is death to the many, and in which the spectators halloo and encourage the strong to set upon the weak, and cry havoc in the chase, though they do not share in the spoil.

One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole or ace, than if one has never had a chance of winning it.

It is better to drink of deep grief than to taste shallow pleasures.

As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.