William Hazlitt Quotations | Page 3

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.

The world judge of men by their ability in their professions, and we judge of ourselves by the same test; for it is on that on which our success in life depends

An excess of modesty is in fact an excess of pride, and more hurtful to the individual, and less advantageous to society, than the grossest and most unblushing vanity.

An indigestion is an excellent common-place for two people that never met before.

So society, when out of order, which it is whenever the interests of the many are regularly and outrageously sacrificed to those of the few, must be repaired, and either a reform or a revolution cleanse its corruptions and renew its elasticity.

A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one they shew one another off to the best advantage.

A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one -- they show one another off to the best advantage.

The generality of mankind are contented to be estimated by what they possess instead of what they are.

All that is worth remembering of life is the poetry of it

The incognito of an inn is one of its striking privileges.

The fields his study, nature was his book.

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

The truly proud man knows neither superiors nor inferiors. The first he does not admit of; the last he does not concern himself about.

It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world

Every one in a crowd has the power to throw dirt: nine out of ten have the inclination

Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.

The young are prodigal of life from a superabundance of it; the old are tenacious on the same score, because they have little left, and cannot enjoy even what remains of it.

When a man is dead, they put money in his coffin, erect monuments to his memory, and celebrate the anniversary of his birthday in set speeches. Would they take any notice of him if he were living? No!

It is surely a distinct question, what you can persuade people to do by argument and fair discussion, and what you may lawfully compel them to do, when reason and remonstrance fail.

We go a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind, much more to get rid of others. It is because I want a little breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters. . . .

The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are the more leisure we have

Comedy naturally wears itself out -- destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at.

I conceive that words are like money, not the worse for being common, but that it is the stamp of custom alone that gives them circulation or value.

If from the top of a long cold barren hill I hear the distant whistle of a thrush which seems to come up from some warm woody shelter beyond the edge of the hill, this sound coming faint over the rocks with a mingled feeling of strangeness and joy, the idea of the place about me, and the imaginary one beyond will all be combined together in such a manner in my mind as to become inseparable.

Amsterdam did not answer our expectations; it is a kind of paltry, rubbishy Venice

The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.

We are fonder of visiting our friends in health than in sickness. We judge less favorably of their characters when any misfortune happens to them; and a lucky hit, either in business or reputation, improves even their personal appearance in our eyes.

Persons who undertake to pry into, or cleanse out all the filth of a common sewer, either cannot have very nice noses, or will soon lose them.

The more you do, the more you can do.

Life is the art of being well deceived.

The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously, and those who have produced immortal works have done so without knowing how or why.

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.

In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide from feeling, and not from reason ... If we were obliged to enter into a theoretical deliberation on every occasion before we act, life would be at a stand, and Art would be impracticable.

No really great man ever thought himself so.

It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.

Those who can command themselves command others.

The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.

The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.

A nickname is the hardest stone that the devil can throw at a man.

I do not think that what is called Love at first sight is so great an absurdity as it is sometimes imagined to be. We generally make up our minds beforehand to the sort of person we should like, grave or gay, black, brown, or fair; with golden tresses or raven locks; - and when we meet with a complete example of the qualities we admire, the bargain is soon struck.

The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.

Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves.

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?

So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.

Who likes not his business, his business likes not him.

The way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it.

Love and joy are twins or born of each other.

When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.

Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others.

The worst old age is that of the mind.

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.

Faith is necessary to victory.

Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.

The rule for traveling abroad is to take our common sense with us, and leave our prejudices behind.

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

Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken

The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.

The more a man writes, the more he can write.

The multitude who require to be led, still hate their leaders.

[Science is] the desire to know causes.

We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.

No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.

Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere.

Persons without education certainly do not want either acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns themselves, or in things immediately within their observation; but they have no power of abstraction, no general standard of taste, or scale of opinion. They see their objects always near, and never in the horizon. Hence arises that egotism which has been remarked as the characteristic of self-taught men.

Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity.

To be forward to praise others implies either great eminence, that can afford to, part with applause; or great quickness of discernment, with confidence in our own judgments; or great sincerity and love of truth, getting the better of our self-love.

He who does nothing renders himself incapable of doing any thing; but while we are executing any work, we are preparing and qualifying ourselves to undertake another.

I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it.

Books are a world in themselves, it is true; but they are not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it.

Learning is its own exceeding great reward; and at the period of which we speak, it bore other fruits, not unworthy of it.

Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity.

Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety.

Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.

Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization.

Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner - and then to thinking! ... I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.

The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.

The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it.

The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods.

The secret of the difficulties of those people who make a great deal of money, and yet are always in want of it, is this-they throw it away as soon as they get it on the first whim or extravagance that strikes them, and have nothing left to meet ordinary expenses or discharge old debts.

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.

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

What I mean by living to one's-self is living in the world, as in it, not of it: it is as if no one know there was such a person, and you wished no one to know it: it is to be a silent spectator of the mighty scene of things, not an object of attention or curiosity in it; to take a thoughtful, anxious interest in what is passing in the world, but not to feel the slightest inclination to make or meddle with it.

When we hear complaints of the wretchedness or vanity of human life, the proper answer to them would be that there is hardly any one who at some point or other has not been in love. If we consider the high abstraction of this feeling, its depth, its purity, its voluptuous refinement, even in the meanest breast, how sacred and how sweet it is, this alone may reconcile us to the lot of humanity. That drop of balm turns the bitter cup to a delicious nectar.

There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. "I count only the hours that are serene.".

Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.

But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.

The silence of a friend commonly amounts to treachery. His not daring to say anything in our behalf implies a tacit censure.

Whatever interests is interesting.

The love of fame is too high and delicate a feeling in the mind to be mixed up with realities, it is a solitary abstraction. * * * A name "fast anchored in the deep abyss of time" is like a star twinkling in the firmament, cold, silent, distant, but eternal and sublime; and our transmitting one to posterity is as if we should contemplate our translation to the skies.

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer - that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

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

Pride erects a little kingdom of its own, and acts as sovereign in it.

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

Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.

Love may turn to indifference with possession.

The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.

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

We go on a journey to be free of all impediments; to leave ourselves behind much more than to get rid of others