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
truth men order
An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.
thinking order way
To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead.
order psychology produce
We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.
order stupidity crowds
Mankind are a herd of knaves and fools. It is necessary to join the crowd, or get out of their way, in order not to be trampled to death by them.
book order library
There are persons who are never easy unless they are putting your books and papers in order--that is, according to their notions of the matter--and hide things lest they should be lost, where neither the owner nor anybody else can find them. This is a sort of magpie faculty. If anything is left where you want it, it is called litter. There is a pedantry in housewifery, as well as in the gravest concerns. Abraham Tucker complained that whenever his maid servant had been in his library, he could not see comfortably to work again for several days.
life art order
Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.
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.
answering belief believe difference feeling left media paid spent swear truth turns
Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for -- they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood?
cleanse either interests reform regularly renew revolution sacrificed whenever
So society, when out of order, which it is whenever the interests of the many are regularly and outrageously sacrificed to those of the few, must be repaired, and either a reform or a revolution cleanse its corruptions and renew its elasticity.
forget largest truest
Those who have the largest hearts, have the soundest understandings; and he is the truest philosopher who can forget himself.
eagerness learning
That which any one has been long learning unwillingly, he unlearns with proportional eagerness and haste.