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
reality greatness way
The safest kind of praise is to foretell that another will become great in some particular way. It has the greatest show of magnanimity and the least of it in reality.
greatness dignity
No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness.
greatness dignity shrinks
...greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into itself.
player greatness men
A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill, which are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or trophy of themselves without them
character greatness purpose
To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.
greatness fame popularity
Popularity is neither fame nor greatness.
greatness men way
Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not enough that a man has great power in himself, he must shew it to all the world in a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid.
greatness men people
Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps.
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.
life greatness men
No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
anniversary birthday celebrate man money monuments notice
When a man is dead, they put money in his coffin, erect monuments to his memory, and celebrate the anniversary of his birthday in set speeches. Would they take any notice of him if he were living? No!
work
When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener the better) I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated.
afterwards anywhere borrow english-critic life spend traveling
I should like to spend the whole of my life in traveling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home.
playing
The world has been doing little else but playing at make-believe all its lifetime.