809 Quotes by William Hazlitt

We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.

He stood bewildered, not appalled, on that dark shore which separates the ancient and the modern world. . . . He is power, passion, self-will personified.

It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.

Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass.

Honesty is one part eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves.

He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan.

No young man ever thinks he shall die.

The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.