Quotes by Hazlitt, William

"No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he."

Hazlitt, William on prejudice   

"Some persons make promises for the pleasure of breaking them."

Hazlitt, William on promises
3 fans of this quote   

"There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiless, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself."

Hazlitt, William on public
3 fans of this quote   

"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."

Hazlitt, William on punctuality   

"To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it."

Hazlitt, William on reason   

"We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects."

Hazlitt, William on ridicule   

"Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love."

Hazlitt, William on sarcasm   

"A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it."

Hazlitt, William on scholars and scholarship   

"I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began."

Hazlitt, William on sea   

"The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves."

Hazlitt, William on self-esteem   

"We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit."

Hazlitt, William on self-image   

"Every one in a crowd has the power to throw dirt; none out of ten have the inclination."

Hazlitt, William on slander   

"We are not hypocrites in our sleep."

Hazlitt, William on sleep   

"We talk little when we do not talk about ourselves."

Hazlitt, William on speakers and speaking   

"If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation."

Hazlitt, William on speculation   

"There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man."

Hazlitt, William on stupidity   

"The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have."

Hazlitt, William on action   

"You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world."

Hazlitt, William on action
6 fans of this quote   

"Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse."

Hazlitt, William on bigotry   

"If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago."

Hazlitt, William on books - reading
4 fans of this quote   

"The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be."

Hazlitt, William on business   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"There is an unseemly exposure of the mind, as well as of the body."

Hazlitt, William on candor   

"We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives."

Hazlitt, William on caprice   

"Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols -- it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them."

Hazlitt, William on superstition   

"We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation."

Hazlitt, William on taboos   

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

Hazlitt, William on taste   

"Good temper is one of the greatest preservers of the features."

Hazlitt, William on temper   

"Good temper is an estate for life."

Hazlitt, William on temper   

"Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts."

Hazlitt, William on thoughts and thinking   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"I would like to spend my whole life traveling, if I could borrow another life to spend at home."

Hazlitt, William on travel
3 fans of this quote   

"There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you."

Hazlitt, William on tyranny
3 fans of this quote   

"The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture."

Hazlitt, William on understanding   

"The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings."

Hazlitt, William on value
3 fans of this quote   

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

Hazlitt, William on virtue   

"People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel."

Hazlitt, William on vocation
4 fans of this quote   

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

Hazlitt, William on vocation   

"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."

Hazlitt, William on vocation   

"Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves."

Hazlitt, William on war
3 fans of this quote   

"Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food."

Hazlitt, William on wit
4 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything."

Hazlitt, William on writers and writing