William Hazlitt Quotes

434 Sourced Quotes

Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.

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

William Hazlitt
No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.

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

William Hazlitt
We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.

William Hazlitt
Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.

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

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

William Hazlitt
The thing is plain. All that men really understand is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know and motives to study or practise. The rest is affectation and imposture.

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

William Hazlitt
There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.

William Hazlitt
Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.

William Hazlitt
When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.

William Hazlitt
Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.

William Hazlitt
Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.

William Hazlitt
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. The future is like a dead wall or a thick mist hiding all objects from our view; the past is alive and stirring with objects, bright or solemn, and of unfading interest.

William Hazlitt
Any one 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.

William Hazlitt
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!

William Hazlitt
Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

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

William Hazlitt
To be remembered after we are dead, is but a poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.

William Hazlitt
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.

William Hazlitt
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.

William Hazlitt
A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof. The throwing out [of] malicious imputations against any character leaves a stain, which no after-refutation can wipe out. To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said. The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.

William Hazlitt
Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge.

William Hazlitt