809 Quotes by William Hazlitt

Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well to absent themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recall them; but we can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home!

A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common.

To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous; or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.

The surest hindrance of success is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the judgment of the public. He who is determined not to be satisfied with anything short of perfection will never do anything to please himself or others.

If we are long absent from our friends, we forget them; if we are constantly with them, we despise them.

We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves, and have neither thoughts nor feelings to impart to them. Give a man a topic in his head, a throb of pleasure in his heart, and he will be glad to share it with the first person he meets.

This is the test and triumph of originality, not to show us what has never been, and what we may therefore very easily never have dreamt of, but to point out to us what is before our eyes and under our feet, though we have had no suspicion of its existence, for want of sufficient strength of intuition, of determined grasp of mind to seize and retain it.

Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.

It might be argued, that to be a knave is the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary to be a learned man.