William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt
William Hazlittwas an English writer, 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...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionCritic
Date of Birth10 April 1778
disappointment proud lasts
To the proud the slightest repulse or disappointment is the last indignity.
fall imagination people
When the imagination is continually led to the brink of vice by a system of terror and denunciations, people fling themselves over the precipice from the mere dread of falling.
giving succeed failing
There are some persons who never succeed from being too indolent to undertake anything; and others who regularly fail, because the instant they find success in their power, they grow indifferent, and give over the attempt.
heart secret vices
Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart.
gratitude punishment body
Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
teacher laughter opportunity
Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) - neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.
memories men mind
Those only deserve a monument who do not need one; that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.
men teeth kind
One said a tooth drawer was a kind of unconscionable trade, because his trade was nothing else but to take away those things whereby every man gets his living.
class proud meanness
I am proud up to the point of equality; everything above or below that appears to me arrant impertinence or abject meanness.
writing pedants faults
To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous; or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.
character personality enough
Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.
character personality merit
Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.
art real ignorance
Wonder at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.
men stronger age
It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, anymore than they grow stronger or healthier or honest.