William Hazlitt Quotes - Page 21

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• The best way to make ourselves agreeable to others is by seeming to think them so. If we appear fully sensible of their good qualities they will not complain of the want of them in us.

  William Hazlitt

  Thinking, Quality, Complaining

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

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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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• Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.

  William Hazlitt

  Family, Running, Blood

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.2020, Delphi Classics

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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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• Tyrants forego all respect for humanity in proportion as they are sunk beneath it. Taught to believe themselves of a different species, they really become so, lose their participation with their kind, and in mimicking the god dwindle into the brute.

  William Hazlitt

  Believe, Tyrants, Humanity

  William Hazlitt (1848). “The Miscellaneous Works”, p.181

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• The present is an age of talkers, and not of doers; and the reason is, that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and dote on past achievement.

  William Hazlitt

  Art, Past, Achievement

  'The Spirit of the Age' (1825) 'Mr Coleridge'

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• The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.

  William Hazlitt

  Player, Envy, Poet

  William Hazlitt (1839). “Sketches and Essays”, p.313

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• It is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying on itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things.

  William Hazlitt

  Struggle, Passion, Mind

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.744, Delphi Classics

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• Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.

  William Hazlitt

  Lying, Faces, Opinion

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.487

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• Popularity disarms envy in well-disposed minds. Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others who feel that the world has done them justice. When success has not this effect in opening the mind, it is a sign that it has been ill deserved.

  William Hazlitt

  Envy, Justice, Mind

  William Hazlitt (1823). “Characteristics: In the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims”, p.4

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• Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to our efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap.

  William Hazlitt

  Honesty, Power, Hypocrisy

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.487

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• Tears may be considered as the natural and involuntary resource of the mind overcome by some sudden and violent emotion, before ithas had time to reconcile its feelings to the change in circumstances: while laughter may be defined to be the same sort of convulsive and involuntary movement, occasioned by mere sur prise or contrast (in the absence of any more serious emotion), before it has time to reconcile its belief to contradictory appearances.

  William Hazlitt

  Laughter, Feelings, Mind

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Lectures on the English Comic Writers”, p.2

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• 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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• Good temper is one of the great preservers of the features.

  William Hazlitt

  Temper, Features

  "The Complete Works of William Hazlitt".

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• Every man, in judging of himself, is his own contemporary. He may feel the gale of popularity, but he cannot tell how long it will last. His opinion of himself wants distance, wants time, wants numbers, to set it off and confirm it.

  William Hazlitt

  Distance, Men, Numbers

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

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• Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it.

  William Hazlitt

  Men, Good Man, Society

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1227, Delphi Classics

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• Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.

  William Hazlitt

  Writing, Simplicity, Style

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

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• 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

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• A woman's vanity is interested in making the object of her choice the god of her idolatry.

  William Hazlitt

  Vanity, Choices, Idolatry

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1871, Delphi Classics

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• The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.

  William Hazlitt

  Men, Power, Tyrants

  William Hazlitt (1819). “Political essays, with sketches of public characters”, p.163

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• Walk groundly, talk profoundly, drink roundly, sleep soundly.

  William Hazlitt

  Sleep, Drink, Walks

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• 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

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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'

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• General principles are not the less true or important because from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it.

  William Hazlitt

  Philosophy, Elude Us, Air

  William Hazlitt (1809). “The Eloquence of the British Senate: Being a Selection of the Best Speeches of the Most Distinguished English, Irish, and Scotch Parliamentary Speakers, from the Beginning of the Reign of Charles I. to the Present Time”, p.209

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• Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity.

  William Hazlitt

  Fashion, Two, Ends

  1818 'On Fashion', in the Scots Magazine.

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