William Hazlitt Quotes

• Man is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.

  William Hazlitt

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• All is without form and void. Someone said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing and very like.

  William Hazlitt

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• There is an unseemly exposure of mind, as well as of the body.

  William Hazlitt

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• The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it.

  William Hazlitt

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• But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.

  William Hazlitt

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• So have I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.

  William Hazlitt

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• Well, I’ve had a happy life.

  William Hazlitt

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• The origin of all science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.

  William Hazlitt

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• His sayings are generally like women’s letters; all the pith is in the postscript.

  William Hazlitt

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• Mr Wordsworth’s genius is a pure emanation of the Spirit of the Age. Had he lived in any other period of the world, he would never have been heard of.

  William Hazlitt

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• He writes as fast as they can read, and he does not write himself down… His worst is better than any other person’s best… His works (taken together) are almost like a new edition of human nature. This is indeed to be an author!

  William Hazlitt

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• The present is an age of talkers, and not of doers; and the reason is, that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and dote on past achievement.

  William Hazlitt

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• Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization.

  William Hazlitt

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• He is a kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country.

  William Hazlitt

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• It takes up no falling cause; fights no uphill battle; advocates no great principle; holds out a helping hand to no oppressed or obscure individual. It is ‘ever strong upon the stronger side’.

  William Hazlitt

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• It is a commercial paper, a paper of business, and it is conducted on principles of trade and business. It floats with the tide: it sails with the stream. It has no other principle.

  William Hazlitt

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• The Times is, we suppose, entitled to the character it gives of itself, of being the ‘leading journal of Europe’, and is perhaps the greatest engine of temporary opinion in the world.

  William Hazlitt

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• Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours’ march to dinner—and then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths.

  William Hazlitt

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• You will hear more good things on the outside of a stagecoach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university.

  William Hazlitt

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• Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity.

  William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt (154)

Birth:	10th April, 1778
Death:	18th September, 1830
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Essayist, Painter, Philosopher, Writer

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