809 Quotes by William Hazlitt

The “olden times” are only such in reference to us. The past is rendered strange, mysterious, visionary, awful from this great gap in time that parts us from it, and the long perspective of waning years. Things gone by and almost forgotten, look dim and dull, uncouth and quaint, from our ignorance of them, and the mutability of customs. But in their day—they were fresh, unimpaired, in full vigour, familiar and glossy.

The present is an age of talkers, and not 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 doat on past achievements.

Refinement creates beauty everywhere: it is the grossness of the spectator that discovers nothing but grossness in the object.

The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.

There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.

Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others, who feel that the world has done them justice.

The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear great ones as well as we can.

Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.

Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.