William Hazlitt - Talk Quotes

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Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the colour in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty, and your animal spirits, and you will pass for a fine man.

William Hazlitt
Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.

William Hazlitt
For my own part, as I once said, I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.

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

William Hazlitt
It is strange that people should take so much interest at one time in what they so soon forget; — the truth is, they feel no interest in it [news of the day] at any time, but it does for something to talk about. Their ideas are served up to them, like their bill of fare, for the day; and the whole creation, history, war, politics, morals, poetry, metaphysics, is to them like a file of antedated newspapers, of no use, not even for reference, except the one which lies on the table! You cannot take any of these persons at a greater disadvantage than before they are provided with their cue for the day. They ask with a face of dreary vacuity, 'Have you anything new?' — and on receiving an answer in the negative, have nothing further to say.

William Hazlitt
There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.

William Hazlitt
In some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates.

William Hazlitt
Talk of mobs! Is there any body of people that has this character in a more consummate degree than the House of Commons? Is there any set of men that determines more by acclamation, and less by deliberation and individual conviction?

William Hazlitt
He talked on for ever; and you wished him to talk on for ever.

William Hazlitt
To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous; or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.

William Hazlitt
Walk groundly, talk profoundly, drink roundly, sleep soundly.

William Hazlitt
Humour is the making others act or talk absurdly and unconsciously; wit is the pointing out and ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more or less ill-nature.

William Hazlitt
A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject, excites no interest in any. Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.

William Hazlitt