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William Hazlitt Quotes - Page 22

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Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.

Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.

William Hazlitt
Gratitude, Punishment, Body
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1292, Delphi Classics

Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart.

William Hazlitt
Heart, Secret, Vices
William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.518

There are some persons who never succeed from being too indolent to undertake anything; and others who regularly fail, because the instant they find success in their power, they grow indifferent, and give over the attempt.

William Hazlitt
Giving, Succeed, Failing
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1518, Delphi Classics

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

William Hazlitt
Speak, Virtue, Ill
'Sketches and Essays' (1839) 'On Cant and Hypocrisy'

Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner - and then to thinking! ... I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.

William Hazlitt
Heart, Thinking, Blue
William Hazlitt (1871). “Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners”, p.250

Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own, and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image of itself. Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant objects please because they border on its confines and are moulded by its touch.

William Hazlitt
Passion, Wings, Space
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1283, Delphi Classics

It has been the resolution of mankind in all ages of the world. No people, no age, ever threw away the fruits of past wisdom, or the enjoyment of present blessings, for visionary schemes of ideal perfection. It is the knowledge of the past, the actual infliction of the present, that has produced all changes, all innovations, and all improvements - not (as is pretended) the chimerical anticipation of possible advantages, but the intolerable pressure of long-established, notorious, aggravated, and growing abuses.

William Hazlitt
Blessing, Past, Long
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1176, Delphi Classics

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
Talking, People, Sake
William Hazlitt (1845). “Table Talk: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things”, p.38

Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference.

William Hazlitt
Facts, Indifference, Wit
William Hazlitt (1857). “Lectures on the English comic writers. Lectures on the English poets”, p.14

One said a tooth drawer was a kind of unconscionable trade, because his trade was nothing else but to take away those things whereby every man gets his living.

William Hazlitt
Men, Teeth, Kind
"hakespeare Jest Books. Conceits, Clinches, Flashes and Whimzies", No. 84, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations, p. 188-89, 1922.

Those only deserve a monument who do not need one; that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.

William Hazlitt
Memories, Men, Mind
William Hazlitt (1837). “Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].”, p.139

A mighty stream of tendency.

William Hazlitt
Evolution, Tendencies, Streams
William Hazlitt (1848). “The Miscellaneous Works”, p.86

There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amends for everything. To be young is to be as one of the Immortals.

William Hazlitt
Feelings, Youth, Eternity
William Hazlitt (1859). “Table talk”, p.1

We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into a union by all the intolerance in the world. If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary rules.

William Hazlitt
Book, Men, Opposites
"Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners". Book by William Hazlitt. Chapter: "On Criticism", 1822.

Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety.

William Hazlitt
Character, Conceited, Ignorant
William Hazlitt (1841). “Lectures on the English Comic Writers. By William Hazlitt. Third edition. Edited by his son [William Hazlitt the Younger].”, p.49

To the proud the slightest repulse or disappointment is the last indignity.

William Hazlitt
Disappointment, Proud, Lasts
William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.473

The fear of punishment may be necessary to the suppression of vice; but it also suspends the finer motives of virtue.

William Hazlitt
Punishment, Vices, May
William Hazlitt (1837). “Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].”, p.55

Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.

William Hazlitt
Men, Opinion, Dies
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1482, Delphi Classics

The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, "No. There was a fire in the room."

William Hazlitt
Princess, Fire, Saint

When we hear complaints of the wretchedness or vanity of human life, the proper answer to them would be that there is hardly any one who at some point or other has not been in love. If we consider the high abstraction of this feeling, its depth, its purity, its voluptuous refinement, even in the meanest breast, how sacred and how sweet it is, this alone may reconcile us to the lot of humanity. That drop of balm turns the bitter cup to a delicious nectar.

William Hazlitt
Love, Sweet, Vanity
William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.507

There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.

William Hazlitt
Integrity, Men, Ideas
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.700, Delphi Classics

A man in love prefers his passion to every other consideration, and is fonder of his mistress than he is of virtue. Should she prove vicious, she makes vice lovely in his eyes.

William Hazlitt
Love, Passion, Eye
William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1510, Delphi Classics

They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

William Hazlitt
Life, Glasses, Hands

Kings ought never to be seen upon the stage. In the abstract, they are very disagreeable characters: it is only while living that they are 'the best of kings'. It is their power, their splendour, it is the apprehension of the personal consequences of their favour or their hatred that dazzles the imagination and suspends the judgement of their favourites or their vassals; but death cancels the bond of allegiance and of interest; and seen AS THEY WERE, their power and their pretensions look monstrous and ridiculous.

William Hazlitt
Kings, Character, Imagination
William Hazlitt (1845). “Characters of Shakespeare's Plays”, p.158

There is evil poured upon the earth from the overflowings of corruption-- Sickness, and poverty, and pain, and guilt, and madness, and sorrow; But, as the water from a fountain riseth and sinketh to its level, Ceaselessly toileth justice to equalize the lots of men.

William Hazlitt
Pain, Men, Justice

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