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
friendship age youth
The youth is better than the old age of friendship.
giving doe habit
Habit in most cases hardens and encrusts by taking away the keener edge of our sensations: but does it not in others quicken and refine, by giving a mechanical facility and by engrafting an acquired sense?
distance men numbers
Every man, in judging of himself, is his own contemporary. He may feel the gale of popularity, but he cannot tell how long it will last. His opinion of himself wants distance, wants time, wants numbers, to set it off and confirm it.
men excellence ignorant
A great man la an abstraction of some one excellence; but whoever fancies himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of excellence or defect of himself or others.
tired people grows
We grow tired of ourselves, much more of other people.
passion reflection men
Reflection brakes men cowards. There is no object that can be put in competition with life, unless it is viewed through the medium of passion, and we are hurried away by the impulse of the moment.
honesty power hypocrisy
Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to our efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap.
envy justice mind
Popularity disarms envy in well-disposed minds. Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others who feel that the world has done them justice. When success has not this effect in opening the mind, it is a sign that it has been ill deserved.
lying faces opinion
Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.
lying force acknowledgement
Lying is the strongest acknowledgement of the force of truth.
running blood literature
Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood.
imagination texture delicate
The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.
heart habit chains
The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.
giving habit
Habit is necessary to give power.