William Hazlitt Quotes - Page 22

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• Learning is its own exceeding great reward; and at the period of which we speak, it bore other fruits, not unworthy of it.

  William Hazlitt

  Rewards, Fruit, Speak

  William Hazlitt (1859). “Table talk”, p.198

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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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• The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.

  William Hazlitt

  Exercise, Thinking, Ideas

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1118, Delphi Classics

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• 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).

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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

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• A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.

  William Hazlitt

  Men, Doe, Proud

  William Hazlitt (1837). “Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].”, p.41

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• Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.

  William Hazlitt

  Beauty Everywhere, Refinement, Spectators

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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

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• A mighty stream of tendency.

  William Hazlitt

  Evolution, Tendencies, Streams

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

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• You will hear more good things on the outside of a stagecoach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university.

  William Hazlitt

  College, Oxford, London

  'Table Talk' vol. 1 (1821) 'The Ignorance of the Learned'

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• We prefer ourselves to others, only because we a have more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person's.

  William Hazlitt

  Vanity, Merit, Opinion

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1466, 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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• Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.

  William Hazlitt

  Men, Vices, Virtue

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.527

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• Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him.

  William Hazlitt

  Men, Vanity, Wish

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1480, Delphi Classics

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• 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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• The essence of poetry is will and passion.

  William Hazlitt

  Passion, Essence, Poetry Is

  William Hazlitt (1836). “Literary Remains of the Late William Hazlitt: With a Notice of His Life”, p.76

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• 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

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