William Hazlitt Quotes

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

William Hazlitt
There is some virtue in almost every vice, except hypocrisy; and even that, while it is a mockery of virtue, is at the same time a compliment to it.

William Hazlitt
The amiable is the voluptuous in expression or manner. The sense of pleasure in ourselves is that which excites it in others; or, the art of pleasing is to seem pleased.

William Hazlitt
Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.

William Hazlitt
If we use no ceremony towards others, we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect.

William Hazlitt
To impress the idea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it.

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

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

William Hazlitt
By retaliating our sufferings on the heads of those we love, we get rid of a present uneasiness and incur lasting remorse. With the accomplishment of our revenge our fondness returns; so that we feel the injury we have done them, even more than they do.

William Hazlitt
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.

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

William Hazlitt
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.

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

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

William Hazlitt
Men of the greatest genius are not always the most prodigal of their encomiums. But then it is when their range of power is confined, and they have in fact little perception, except of their own particular kind of excellence.

William Hazlitt
There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary.

William Hazlitt
Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.

William Hazlitt
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.

William Hazlitt
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.

William Hazlitt
Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of art and fancy.

William Hazlitt
Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.

William Hazlitt
Envy is the deformed and distorted offspring of egotism; and when we reflect on the strange and disproportioned character of the parent, we cannot wonder at the perversity and waywardness of the child.

William Hazlitt
We prefer a person with vivacity and high spirits, though bordering upon insolence, to the timid and pusillanimous; we are fonder of wit joined to malice than of dullness without it.

William Hazlitt
A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dulness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.

William Hazlitt
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.

William Hazlitt
What passes in the world for talent or dexterity or enterprise is often only a want of moral principle. We may succeed where others fail, not from a greater share of invention, but from not being nice in the choice of expedients.

William Hazlitt
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.

William Hazlitt
The discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetness and cement of friendship.

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

William Hazlitt
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.

William Hazlitt