William Hazlitt Quotes - Page 23

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• Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.

  William Hazlitt

  Friendship, Meat, Cold

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1919, Delphi Classics

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• The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.

  William Hazlitt

  Simple, World Love, Forgiving

  William Hazlitt (1924). “Essays”

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• Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic.

  William Hazlitt

  Mean, Passion, Writing

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Lectures on the English Poets”, p.9

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• Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter, we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.

  William Hazlitt

  Perseverance, Passion, Ambition

  William Hazlitt (1837). “Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].”, p.62

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• Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.

  William Hazlitt

  Pride

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.2096, Delphi Classics

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• The safest kind of praise is to foretell that another will become great in some particular way. It has the greatest show of magnanimity and the least of it in reality.

  William Hazlitt

  Reality, Greatness, Way

  William Hazlitt, James Thornton (1967). “A reply to 'Z.' A letter to William Gifford, esq. Prefatory remarks to Oxberry's New English drama. Liber amoris; or, The new Pygmalion. Characteristics. Preface and critical list of authors from Select British poets”

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

  William Hazlitt

  Art, Imagination, Receiving

  William Hazlitt (1852). “Men and manners: sketches and essays”, p.199

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• We trifle with, make sport of, and despise those who are attached to us, and follow those that fly from us.

  William Hazlitt

  Sports, Hate, Despise

  William Hazlitt, Herschel Moreland Sikes, William Hallam Bonner, Gerald Lahey (1979). “The Letters of William Hazlitt”, p.231, Springer

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• Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism ... tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.

  William Hazlitt

  Fashion, Issues, Clothes

  William Hazlitt (1839). “Sketches and Essays”, p.205

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• Life is the art of being well deceived.

  William Hazlitt

  Art, Deceived Us, Deception

  William Hazlitt (1817). “The Round Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men and Manners”, p.36

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• The surest hindrance of success is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the judgment of the public. He who is determined not to be satisfied with anything short of perfection will never do anything to please himself or others.

  William Hazlitt

  Perfection, Mind, Determined

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• A felon could plead "benefit of clergy" and be saved by [reading aloud] what was aptly enough termed the "neck verse", which was very usually the Miserere mei of Psalm 51.

  William Hazlitt

  Book, Reading, Benefits

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• The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.

  William Hazlitt

  Honesty, People, Office

  "Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims". Book by William Hazlitt. No. 43, 1823.

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• Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.

  William Hazlitt

  Kindness, Wish, Favors

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1476, Delphi Classics

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• The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.

  William Hazlitt

  Sacrifice, Vanity, Self

  William Hazlitt, William Ernest Henley (1904). “The Collected Works of William Hazlitt: Fugitive writings”

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• If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.

  William Hazlitt

  Peace, Long Ago, Society

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1924, Delphi Classics

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• We talk little when we do not talk about ourselves.

  William Hazlitt

  Littles, Speakers

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• A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.

  William Hazlitt

  Pain, Giving, Bears

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1360, Delphi Classics

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• The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.

  William Hazlitt

  Thinking, Vanity, Differences

  William Hazlitt (1837). “Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].”, p.119

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• No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.

  William Hazlitt

  Men, Thinking, Self

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Table Talk: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things”, p.127

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• 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

  Religious, Time, Pain

  William Hazlitt (1839). “Sketches and Essays”, p.69

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• 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

  Men, Mind, Speak

  William Hazlitt (1852). “Men and manners: sketches and essays”, p.140

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• In what we really understand, we reason but little.

  William Hazlitt

  Understanding, Littles, Reason

  William Hazlitt, Edward Bulwer Lytton Baron Lytton, Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, Charles Lamb (1836). “Literary Remains of the Late William Hazlitt: With Notice of His Life”, p.156

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• 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.

  William Hazlitt

  Book, Library, World

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1812, Delphi Classics

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• Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.

  William Hazlitt

  Men, Reason, Certain

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Table Talk: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things”, p.224

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