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.
William HazlittNo man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
William HazlittThose who have had none of the cares of this life to harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to the hopes and fears of the next to vary the prospect before them.
William HazlittWe 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 HazlittThere is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary.
William Hazlitt