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William Hazlitt Quotes
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William Hazlitt was an English essayist, drama and literary critic, painter, social commentator, and philosopher. He is now considered one of the greatest critics and essayists in the history of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. He is also acknowledged as the finest art critic of his age. Despite his high standing among historians of literature and art, his work is currently little read and mostly out of print.During his lifetime he befriended many people who are now part of the 19th-century literary canon, including Charles and Mary Lamb, Stendhal, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and John Keats. Wikipedia  

✵ 10. April 1778 – 18. September 1830   •   Other names 威廉·赫茲利特
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William Hazlitt: 186   quotes 2   likes

William Hazlitt Quotes

“There are names written in her immortal scroll, at which FAME blushes!”

William Hazlitt

No. 53
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

“We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.”

William Hazlitt

No. 364
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

Courage , Thinking , Effort

“Grace is the absence of every thing that indicates pain or difficulty, or hesitation or incongruity.”

William Hazlitt book The Round Table

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

Pain

“The love of fame, as it enters at times into his mind, is only another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority — that of time.”

William Hazlitt

Lectures on the English Poets http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16209/16209.txt (1818), Lecture VIII, "On the Living Poets"

Love , Time

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

William Hazlitt

"On Envy"
The Plain Speaker (1826)

Envy

“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

"On Wit and Humour"
Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819)

“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 practise. The rest is affectation and imposture.”

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)

Men , Motivation , Understanding , Study

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

William Hazlitt

"On Cant and Hypocrisy"
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)

“Horus non numero nisi serenas—"I count only the hours that are serene"—is the motto of a sundial near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled.”

William Hazlitt

" On a Sun-Dial http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/Sundial.htm" (New Monthly Magazine, October 1827)
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)

“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

"Why Distant Objects Please"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Knowledge , Sense , Distant , Passion

“Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.”

William Hazlitt

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

“To a superior race of beings the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem equally ridiculous.”

William Hazlitt

No. 191
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

“The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.”

William Hazlitt

Review of Lord Byron's Childe Harold in Yellow Dwarf (2 May 1818), reprinted in The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. A.R. Waller and Arnold Glover (1902-1904)

“They are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream; a studied madness.”

William Hazlitt book The Round Table

" On Actors and Acting" http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/RoundTable/ActorsActing.htm (The Examiner, 5 January 1817)
The Round Table (1815-1817)

Life , Dreams , Study , Madness

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

William Hazlitt book The Spirit of the Age

"Mr. Brougham — Sir F. Burdett" http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_the_Age/Mr._Brougham-Sir_F._Burdett
The Spirit of the Age (1825)

Business

“Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.”

William Hazlitt

" On the Clerical Character http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/Political/ClericalCharacter.htm" (January/February 1818)
Political Essays (1819)

Parting

“The public have neither shame or gratitude.”

William Hazlitt

No. 85
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

Gratitude

“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

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

Men , Books , World , Beauty

“Good temper is an estate for life…”

William Hazlitt

" On Personal Character http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/PersCharacter.htm" (1821)
The Plain Speaker (1826)

Life

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

William Hazlitt

"On the Pleasure of Hating"
The Plain Speaker (1826)

“It is strange that people should take so much interest at one time in what they so soon forget; — the truth is, they feel no interest in it [news of the day] at any time, but it does for something to talk about. Their ideas are served up to them, like their bill of fare, for the day; and the whole creation, history, war, politics, morals, poetry, metaphysics, is to them like a file of antedated newspapers, of no use, not even for reference, except the one which lies on the table! You cannot take any of these persons at a greater disadvantage than before they are provided with their cue for the day. They ask with a face of dreary vacuity, 'Have you anything new?”

William Hazlitt

and on receiving an answer in the negative, have nothing further to say.
"On Coffee-House Politicians"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

War , People , Truth , Feeling

“Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern — why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?”

William Hazlitt

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

Life , Death , Fear , Time

“Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.”

William Hazlitt

No. 2
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

“No really great man ever thought himself so.”

William Hazlitt

"Whether Genius is Conscious of its Powers?"
The Plain Speaker (1826)

“The more we do, the more we can do. ”

William Hazlitt

“I am no politician, and still less can I be said to be a party-man : I have a hatred of tyranny, and a contempt for its tools; and this feeling I have expressed as often and as strongly as I could. I cannot sit quietly down under the claims of barefaced power, and have tried to expose the little arts of sophistry by which they are defended. I have no mind to have my person made a property of, nor my understanding made a dupe of. I deny that liberty and slavery are convertible terms, that right and wrong, truth and falsehood, plenty and famine, the comforts or wretchedness of a people, are matters of perfect indifference. That is all I know of the matter; but on these points I am likely to remain incorrigible, in spite of any arguments that I have seen used to the contrary. It needs no sagacity to discover that two and two make four; but to persist in maintaining this obvious position, if all the fashion, authority, hypocrisy, and venality of mankind were arrayed against it, would require a considerable effort of personal courage, and would soon leave a man in a very formidable minority.”

William Hazlitt

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

Courage , Understanding , Indifference , Personality

“We are very much what others think of us.”

William Hazlitt

The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.
No. 364
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

Thinking