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
sacrifice self vanity
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.
peace long-ago society
If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.
littles speakers
We talk little when we do not talk about ourselves.
idols race giving
Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols -- it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.
men names common
We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.
faithful principles partisans
He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan.
running stupidity competition
Persons of slender intellectual stamina dread competition, as dwarfs are afraid of being run over in the street.
A thought must tell at once, or not at all.
gratitude business corporations
They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
ideas giving atmosphere
Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.
decision soul
The soul of dispatch is decision.
religious men mind
The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way ... an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.
morning health giving
Painting for a whole morning gives one as excellent an appetite for one's dinner, as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his by riding over Banstead Downs.
men animal ideas
Man is an intellectual animal, and therefore an everlasting contradiction to himself. His senses centre in himself, his ideas reach to the ends of the universe; so that he is torn in pieces between the two, without a possibility of its ever being otherwise.