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
rights reform settings
Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.
men mind speak
To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.
regret truth able
One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.
religious time pain
Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it.
taste knows
Those who are pleased with the fewest things know the least, as those who are pleased with everything know nothing.
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.