William Hazlitt: Trending quotes

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William Hazlitt: 372 quotes2 likes

“You know more of a road by having travelled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.”

"On The Conduct of Life" (1822)

“He changes his opinions as he does his friends, and much on the same account. He has no comfort in fixed principles; as soon as anything is settled in his own mind, he quarrels with it. He has no satisfaction but the chase after truth, runs a question down, worries and kills it, then quits it like a vermin, and starts some new game, to lead him a new dance, and give him a fresh breathing through bog and brake, with the rabble yelping at his heels and the leaders perpetually at fault.”

William Hazlitt

"On the Character of Cobbett" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

“There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our friends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please — that is as they please or displease us.”

William Hazlitt

No. 60
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

“The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakespeare, every thing.”

William Hazlitt

Lectures on the English Poets http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16209/16209.txt (1818), Lecture III, "On Shakespeare and Milton"

“We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.”

William Hazlitt

"On Dreams"
The Plain Speaker (1826)

“Any one who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.”

William Hazlitt

"On the Ignorance of the Learned" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

“Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.”

William Hazlitt

"On Application to Study"
The Plain Speaker (1826)

“Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy.”

William Hazlitt

"On the Pleasure of Painting" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

“If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.”

William Hazlitt

"On Great and Little Things" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

“Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity, who drink of that flood of glory as of a river, and refresh our wings in it for future flight.”

William Hazlitt

No. 389
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

“Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge.”

William Hazlitt

"On the Ignorance of the Learned" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

“He who would see old Hoghton right
Must view it by the pale moonlight.”

William Hazlitt

William Carew Hazlitt, English Proverbs and Provincial Phrases, (London, 1882) http://books.google.com/books?vid=0BwDL0yjf1gG1Sn05IQSrM4&id=mmkKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205&dq=%22He+who+would+see+old+Hoghton+right%22#PPA205,M1 Misattributed

“An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.”

William Hazlitt

No. 387
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

“We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.”

William Hazlitt

"Thoughts on Taste," Edinburgh Magazine, (October 1818), reprinted in The Collected Works of William Hazlitt (1902-1904)

“Grace has been defined the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.”

William Hazlitt book The Round Table

"On Manner"
The Round Table (1815-1817)

“The Tory is one who is governed by sense and habit alone. He considers not what is possible, but what is real; he gives might the preference over right. He cries long life to the conqueror, and is ever strong upon the stronger side — the side of corruption and prerogative.”

William Hazlitt

" Preface.htm http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/Political/" Political Essays (1819)

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

William Hazlitt

No. 162
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

“His hypothesis goes to this — to make the common run of his readers fancy they can do all that can be done by genius, and to make the man of genius believe he can only do what is to be done by mechanical rules and systematic industry. This is not a very feasible scheme; nor is Sir Joshua sufficiently clear and explicit in his reasoning in support of it.”

William Hazlitt

"On Certain Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

“Thought depends on the habitual exercise of the speculative faculties; action, on the determination of the will. The one assigns reasons for things, the other puts causes into act. … Such is the effeminacy of the speculative and philosophical temperament, compared with the promptness and vigour of the practical! … Reasoners in general are undecided, wavering, and sceptical, or yield at last to the weakest motive as most congenial to their feeble habit of soul.”

William Hazlitt

"On Thought and Action" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

“A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man.”

William Hazlitt

"On Nicknames"
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)