Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, which never surfeits. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust. Hatred alone is immortal.
William HazlittWe had rather do anything than acknowledge the merit of another if we can help it. We cannot bear a superior or an equal. Hence ridicule is sure to prevail over truth, for the malice of mankind, thrown into the scale, gives the casting weight.
William HazlittDo not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
William HazlittIn some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates.
William HazlittTo be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.
William HazlittLove turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust; hatred alone is immortal.
William HazlittThe smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.
William HazlittThey are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.
William HazlittGrace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.
William HazlittTo die is only to be as we were before we were born; yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance, in contemplating this last idea.
William HazlittEnvy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.
William HazlittIt is easier taking the beaten path than making our way over bogs and precipices. The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information.
William HazlittGeneral principles are not the less true or important because from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it.
William HazlittEvery one in a crowd has the power to throw dirt; none out of ten have the inclination.
William HazlittThe person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favor.
William HazlittOne of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey; I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone.
William HazlittSilence is one great art of conversation. He is not a fool who knows when to hold his tongue; and a person may gain credit for sense, eloquence, wit, who merely says nothing to lessen the opinion which others have of these qualities in themselves.
William HazlittThe love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame.
William HazlittThe most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.
William HazlittThe difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.
William HazlittWithout life there can be no action — no objects of pursuit — no restless desires — no tormenting passions. Hence it is that we fondly cling to it — that we dread its termination as the close, not of enjoyment, but of hope.
William HazlittHe who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery.
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 HazlittEvery man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.
William HazlittWe do not die wholly at our deaths: we have mouldered away gradually long before. Faculty after faculty, interest after interest, attachment after attachment disappear: we are torn from ourselves while living.
William HazlittOf all eloquence a nickname is the most concise; of all arguments the most unanswerable.
William HazlittElegance is something more than ease; it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling, spirited yet delicate.
William HazlittPeople do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking.
William HazlittTo 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.
William HazlittWe have more faith in a well-written romance while we are reading it than in common history. The vividness of the representations in the one case more than counterbalances the mere knowledge of the truth of facts in the other.
William Hazlitt