William Hazlitt (1778 – 1830)
English writer remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism.
Any one who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.
Good temper is one of the great preservers of the features.
As is our confidence, so is our capacity.
Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope; and few are reduced so low as that.
Those only deserve a monument who do not need one; that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.
To a superior race of beings the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem equally ridiculous.
Some persons make promises for the pleasure of breaking them.
Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life.
Learning is its own exceeding great reward; and at the period of which we speak, it bore other fruits, not unworthy of it.
Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone — but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
But fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism: it is haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath — tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.
One has no notion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist; his style stuns readers...He is too much for any single newspaper antagonist; "lays waste" a city orator or Member of Parliament, and bears hard upon the government itself. He is kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country.
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?
Grace is the absence of every thing that indicates pain or difficulty, or hesitation or incongruity.
He changes his opinions as he does his friends, and much on the same account. He has no comfort in fixed principles; as soon as anything is settled in his own mind, he quarrels with it. He has no satisfaction but the chase after truth, runs a question down, worries and kills it, then quits it like a vermin, and starts some new game, to lead him a new dance, and give him a fresh breathing through bog and brake, with the rabble yelping at his heels and the leaders perpetually at fault.
Unlimited power is helpless, as arbitrary power is capricious. Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We can attempt nothing great, but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter: we can persevere in nothing great, but from a pride in overcoming them.
Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labour in it, but they labour in it because they excel.
Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) — neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.
What I mean by living to one's-self is living in the world, as in it, not of it: it is as if no one know there was such a person, and you wished no one to know it: it is to be a silent spectator of the mighty scene of things, not an object of attention or curiosity in it; to take a thoughtful, anxious interest in what is passing in the world, but not to feel the slightest inclination to make or meddle with it.
There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amends for everything. To be young is to be as one of the Immortals.