William Hazlitt Quotes - Page 24

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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

  8 Copy quote

• The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.

  William Hazlitt

  Anger, Fire, Spirit

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• The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it.

  William Hazlitt

  Speak, Virtue, Ill

  'Sketches and Essays' (1839) 'On Cant and Hypocrisy'

  7 Copy quote

• All is without form and void. Someone said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing and very like.

  William Hazlitt

  Landscape, Void, Form

  Of Turner's painting, quoted in J Lindsay Turner: The Man and his Art (1985).

  4 Copy quote

• There cannot be a surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel.

  William Hazlitt

  Thinking, Talking, Proof

  William Hazlitt (1859). “Table talk”

  21 Copy quote

• The look of a gentleman is little else than the reflection of the looks of the world.

  William Hazlitt

  Reflection, Gentleman, Looks

  4 Copy quote

• 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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• 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

  Vanity, Arrogant, Dull

  William Hazlitt (1837). “Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].”, p.135

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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 great have private feelings of their own, to which the interests of humanity and justice must curtsy. Their interests are so far from being the same as those of the community, that they are in direct and necessary opposition to them; their power is at the expense of OUR weakness; their riches of OUR poverty; their pride of OUR degradation; their splendour of OUR wretchedness; their tyranny of OUR servitude.

  William Hazlitt

  Pride, Justice, Community

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.411, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• Grace in women has more effect than beauty. We sometimes see a certain fine self-possession, an habitual voluptuousness of character, which reposes on its own sensations and derives pleasure from all around it, that is more irresistible than any other attraction. There is an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, "in their eyes, in their arms, and their hands, and their face," which robs us of ourselves, and draws us by a secret sympathy towards them.

  William Hazlitt

  Character, Eye, Air

  William Hazlitt (1872). “Sketches and Essays: And Winterslow (essays Written There).”, p.365

  8 Copy quote

• Every one in a crowd has the power to throw dirt; none out of ten have the inclination.

  William Hazlitt

  Power, Crowds, Dirt

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• Reflection brakes men cowards. There is no object that can be put in competition with life, unless it is viewed through the medium of passion, and we are hurried away by the impulse of the moment.

  William Hazlitt

  Passion, Reflection, Men

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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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• The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear great ones as well as we can.

  William Hazlitt

  Grief, Littles, Bears

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1256, Delphi Classics

  7 Copy quote

• We grow tired of ourselves, much more of other people.

  William Hazlitt

  Tired, People, Grows

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.493

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• We learn to curb our will and keep our overt actions within the bounds of humanity, long before we can subdue our sentiments and imaginations to the same mild tone.

  William Hazlitt

  Anger, Long, Imagination

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1916, Delphi Classics

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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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• There are persons who are never easy unless they are putting your books and papers in order--that is, according to their notions of the matter--and hide things lest they should be lost, where neither the owner nor anybody else can find them. This is a sort of magpie faculty. If anything is left where you want it, it is called litter. There is a pedantry in housewifery, as well as in the gravest concerns. Abraham Tucker complained that whenever his maid servant had been in his library, he could not see comfortably to work again for several days.

  William Hazlitt

  Book, Order, Library

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• The last sort I shall mention are verbal critics - mere word-catchers, fellows that pick out a word in a sentence and a sentence in a volume, and tell you it is wrong. The title of Ultra-Crepidarian critics has been given to a variety of this species.

  William Hazlitt

  Titles, Lasts, Catchers

  William Hazlitt (1822). “Table-talk: Or, Original Essays”, p.143

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• It [will-making] is the latest opportunity we have of exercising the natural perversity of the disposition. This last act of our lives seldom belies the former tenor of them for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so (in settling accounts with those who are so unmannerly as to survive us) as to do as little good, and to plague and disappoint as many people, as possible.

  William Hazlitt

  Exercise, Opportunity, Thinking

  "Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners". Book by William Hazlitt. Chapter: "On Will-Making", 1822.

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• A man is a hypocrite only when he affects to take a delight in what he does not feel, not because he takes a perverse delight in opposite things.

  William Hazlitt

  Hypocrite, Men, Opposites

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.500

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• Charity, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Next to putting it in a bank, men like to squander their superfluous wealth on those to whom it is sure to be doing the least possible good.

  William Hazlitt

  Money, Men, Vacuums

  William Hazlitt, James Thornton (1967). “Miscellaneous writings”

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• The number of objects we see from living in a large city amuses the mind like a perpetual raree-show, without supplying it with any ideas.

  William Hazlitt

  Cities, Ideas, Numbers

  William Hazlitt (1837). “Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].”, p.140

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• We judge of others for the most part by their good opinion of themselves; yet nothing gives such offense or creates so many enemies, as that extreme self-complacency or superciliousness of manner, which appears to set the opinion of every one else at defiance.

  William Hazlitt

  Self, Giving, Judging

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.452

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