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
emo emo-love violent
The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out.
hate believe passion
It is only necessary to raise a bugbear before the English imagination in order to govern it at will. Whatever they hate or fear, they implicitly believe in, merely from the scope it gives to these passions.
book lasts lovers
Words are the only things that last for ever.
men world great-men
A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.
kings gentleman noblemen
Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman; elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman; dignity is proper to noblemen; and majesty to kings.
government abuse mind
Shall I faint, now that I have poured out the spirit of my mind to the world, and treated many subjects with truth, with freedom, with power, because I have been followed with one cry of abuse ever since for not being a Government tool?
I am then never less alone than when alone
reform succeed triumph
It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.
government law people
Wherever the Government does not emanate...from the people, the principle of the Government, the esprit de corps, the point of honour, in all those connected with it, and raised by it to privileges above the law and above humanity, will be hatred to the people.
hopeful possession
Hope is the best possession.
hypocrite theatre actors
Actors are the only honest hypocrites.
dream hypocrite acting
They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
laughing weakness comedy
Comedy naturally wears itself out - destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at.
greatness dignity
No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness.