Authors:

William Hazlitt Quotes - Page 19

All Quotes Abuse Acceptance Achievement Acting Affection Age Ambition Anger Art Belief Business Character Children Choices Common Sense Community Competition Composition Confidence Country Critics Death Deception Desire Devil Dignity Diversity Dying Earth Education Effort Envy Evil Excellence Exercise Failing Fame Fashion Fear Of Death Feelings Freedom Friends Friendship Funny Genius Giving Grace Gratitude Greatness Growth Happiness Hate Hatred Heart Honesty Hope Humanity Hurt Hypocrisy Ignorance Imagination Inspirational Intelligence Journey Joy Judging Justice Knowledge Language Laughter Leadership Learning Liberty Life Love Lying Modesty Money Monument Motivational Nature Opportunity Pain Painting Passion Peace Perfection Personality Philosophy Pleasure Poverty Power Prejudice Pride Prudence Quality Reading Reflection Regret Reputation Respect Ridicule Running Science Shame Silence Sincerity Society Soul Sports Struggle Stupidity Style Success Talent Teaching Time Travel Truth Understanding Virtue Vocation Water Weakness Wealth Wit Writing Youth
Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.

Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.

William Hazlitt
Friendship, Breakup, Promise
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1873, Delphi Classics

Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.

William Hazlitt
Heart, Language, Contempt
William Hazlitt (1845). “Lectures on the English Poets”, p.1

Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?

William Hazlitt
Dark, Water, Trying
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1100, Delphi Classics

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

The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.

William Hazlitt
Errors, World, Dread
William Hazlitt (1839). “Sketches and Essays by W. H. Now first collected [and edited] by his son”, p.160

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”

Poverty is the test of civility and the touchstone of friendship.

William Hazlitt
Tests, Poverty, Civility
William Hazlitt (1837). “Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].”, p.132

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

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

To-day kings, to-marrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing.

William Hazlitt
Kings, Acting, Beggar

Books wind into the heart.

William Hazlitt
Book, Heart, Wind

There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.

William Hazlitt
Thinking, Hype, Pieces
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1472, Delphi Classics

His hypothesis goes to this - to make the common run of his readers fancy they can do all that can be done by genius, and to make the man of genius believe he can only do what is to be done by mechanical rules and systematic industry. This is not a very feasible scheme; nor is Sir Joshua sufficiently clear and explicit in his reasoning in support of it.

William Hazlitt
Running, Believe, Men
William Hazlitt (1845). “Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners”

If we are long absent from our friends, we forget them; if we are constantly with them, we despise them.

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

If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.

William Hazlitt
Reading, Intelligence, Wish
William Hazlitt (1924). “Essays”

The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.

William Hazlitt
Hate, Lost Friendship, World
'The Plain Speaker' (1826) 'On the Pleasure of Hating'

The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame.

William Hazlitt
Passion, Men, Letters
William Hazlitt (1852). “Men and manners: sketches and essays”, p.237

The fear of approaching death, which in youth we imagine must cause inquietude to the aged, is very seldom the source of much uneasiness.

William Hazlitt
Death, Causes, Youth

The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.

William Hazlitt
Critics, Composition, Originals
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1498, Delphi Classics

The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading while we are young. I have had as much of this pleasure perhaps as any one.

William Hazlitt
Reading, Book, Life Is
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1914, Delphi Classics

To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.

William Hazlitt
Writing, Choices, Style
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1270, Delphi Classics

Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.

William Hazlitt
Love, Envy, Justice
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1465, Delphi Classics

To die is only to be as we were before we were born; yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance, in contemplating this last idea.

William Hazlitt
Regret, Ideas, Lasts
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1353, Delphi Classics

No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.

William Hazlitt
Perfection, Stealth, Approach
William Hazlitt (1839). “Sketches and Essays by W. H. Now first collected [and edited] by his son”, p.255

That which is not, shall never be; that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident.

William Hazlitt
Wise, Self, Evident

You May Also Like: