Will Hazlitt Quotes

The amiable is the voluptuous in expression or manner. The sense of pleasure in ourselves is that which excites it in others; or, the art of pleasing is to seem pleased.

The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.

One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.

Painters... are the most lively observers of what passes in the world about them, and the closest observers of what passes in their own minds.

Whatever excites the spirit of contradiction is capable of producing the last effects of heroism; which is only the highest pitch of obstinacy, in a good or bad cause, in wisdom or folly.

The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods.

Despair swallows up cowardice.

Good temper is an estate for life.

When you find out a man's ruling passion, beware of crossing him in it.

Persons who undertake to pry into, or cleanse out all the filth of a common sewer, either cannot have very nice noses, or will soon lose them.

Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere.

Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.

To speak highly of one with whom we are intimate is a species of egotism. Our modesty as well as our jealousy teaches us caution on this subject.

Dandyism is a variety of genius.

Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.

I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.

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.

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

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

Habit is necessary to give power.

If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.

We talk little when we do not talk about ourselves.

Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.

To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.

The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.

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

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.

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

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

The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.

Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.

Cowardice is not synonymous with prudence. It often happens that the better part of discretion is valor.

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.

I have known persons without a friend--never any one without some virtue. The virtues of the former conspired with their vices to make the whole world their enemies.

A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common.

Sincerity has to do with the connexion between our words and thoughts, and not between our beliefs and actions.

The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.

Genius is native to the soil where it grows — is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun — and is not a hot - house plant or an exotic.

The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty.

To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.

Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.

Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination.

A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.

The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men.

An accomplished coquette excites the passions of others, in proportion as she feels none herself.

It is well there is no one without fault; for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to s different species.

They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.

A mighty stream of tendency.

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.

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