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.
art bright common compose conveyed fine gentle lesson letting lives mind neglect note rest side slip smiles sunny time turning watch
What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind -- to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip for our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten! How different from the common art of self-tormenting!
adopt grow hear others reconcile sell tired willing
We grow tired of ourselves, much more of other people. Use may in part reconcile us to our own tediousness, but we do not adopt that of others on the same paternal principle. We may be willing to sell a story twice, never to hear one more than once.
forever last words
Words are the only things that last forever
afraid animal greatest ungrateful
There is no more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself.