Top 617 Quotes & Sayings by William Hazlitt - Page 9

The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.

The more you do, the more you can do.

We prefer ourselves to others, only because we a have more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person's.

General principles are not the less true or important because from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it.

A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.

Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.

People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking.

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey; I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone.

A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.

Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.

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.

Our contempt for others proves nothing but the illiberality and narrowness of our own views.

Life is the art of being well deceived.

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.

A man in love prefers his passion to every other consideration, and is fonder of his mistress than he is of virtue. Should she prove vicious, she makes vice lovely in his eyes.

It is well there is no one without fault; for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to s different species.

They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.

Women never reason, and therefore they are (comparatively) seldom wrong.

I have a much greater ambition to be the best racket player than the best prose writer.

The great requisite for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination.

The surest hindrance of success is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the judgment of the public. He who is determined not to be satisfied with anything short of perfection will never do anything to please himself or others.

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."

The safest kind of praise is to foretell that another will become great in some particular way. It has the greatest show of magnanimity and the least of it in reality.

If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will -the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.

Our notions with respect to the importance of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery. The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but of our passions.

Kings ought never to be seen upon the stage. In the abstract, they are very disagreeable characters: it is only while living that they are 'the best of kings'. It is their power, their splendour, it is the apprehension of the personal consequences of their favour or their hatred that dazzles the imagination and suspends the judgement of their favourites or their vassals; but death cancels the bond of allegiance and of interest; and seen AS THEY WERE, their power and their pretensions look monstrous and ridiculous.

Gallantry to women - the sure road to their favor - is nothing but the appearance of extreme devotion to all their wants and wishes, a delight in their satisfaction, and a confidence in yourself as being able to contribute toward it

Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism ... tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.

No man can thoroughly master more than one art or science.

Without life there can be no action — no objects of pursuit — no restless desires — no tormenting passions. Hence it is that we fondly cling to it — that we dread its termination as the close, not of enjoyment, but of hope.

A full-dressed ecclesiastic is a sort of go-cart of divinity; an ethical automaton. A clerical prig is, in general, a very dangerous as well as contemptible character. The utmost that those who thus habitually confound their opinions and sentiments with the outside coverings of their bodies can aspire to, is a negative and neutral character, like wax-work figures, where the dress is done as much to the life as the man, and where both are respectable pieces of pasteboard, or harmless compositions of fleecy hosiery.

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.

An honest man is respected by all parties.

Humanity is to be met with in a den of robbers.

Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination.

The soul of dispatch is decision.

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.

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.

An accomplished coquette excites the passions of others, in proportion as she feels none herself.

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.

I maintain that there is no common language or medium of understanding between people of education and without it - between those who judge of things from books or from their senses. Ignorance has so far the advantage over learning; for it can make an appeal to you from what you know; but you cannot re-act upon it through that which it is a perfect stranger to. Ignorance is, therefore, power.

In what we really understand, we reason but little.

The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.

A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.

There is nothing more to be esteemed than a manly firmness and decision of character.

We are thankful for good-will rather than for services, for the motive than the quantum of favor received.

An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.

The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men.

To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.

There is evil poured upon the earth from the overflowings of corruption-- Sickness, and poverty, and pain, and guilt, and madness, and sorrow; But, as the water from a fountain riseth and sinketh to its level, Ceaselessly toileth justice to equalize the lots of men.

Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it.

The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty.

I am then never less alone than when alone

Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength. There is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

He who would see old Hoghton right Must view it by the pale moonlight.

To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said.

Every one in a crowd has the power to throw dirt; none out of ten have the inclination.

We trifle with, make sport of, and despise those who are attached to us, and follow those that fly from us.

There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.