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
taste improvement diffusion
The diffusion of taste is not the same thing as the improvement of taste.
hope cutting evil
Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.
dignity fortune reverse
The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne from a sort of dignity belonging to them.
attachment long age
We 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.
men thinking self
No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.
scholarship knows
Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know.
greatness ideas mind
He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.
world height looks
From the height from which the great look down on the world all the rest of mankind seem equal.
friendship true-friend hands
True friendship is self-love at second-hand.
book reading mind
The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others.
pain giving bears
A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.
kindness wish favors
Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.
book reading benefits
A felon could plead "benefit of clergy" and be saved by [reading aloud] what was aptly enough termed the "neck verse", which was very usually the Miserere mei of Psalm 51.
honesty people office
The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.