William Hazlitt - Man Quotes

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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.

William Hazlitt
Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may, he will only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.

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

William Hazlitt
A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man.

William Hazlitt
Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.

William Hazlitt
Scholars, like princes, may learn something by being incognito. Yet we see those who cannot go into a bookseller's shop, or bear to be five minutes in a stage-coach, without letting you know who they are. They carry their reputation about with them as the snail does its shell, and sit under its canopy, like the lady in the lobster. I cannot understand this at all. What is the use of a man's always revolving round his own little circle? He must, one should think, be tired of it himself, as well as tire other people.

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
First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.

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

William Hazlitt
Defoe says, that there were a hundred thousand stout country-fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.

William Hazlitt
Man is a make-believe animal — he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.

William Hazlitt
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

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

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

William Hazlitt