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William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt Quotes

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Famous William Hazlitt Quotes

“Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.”

WantWritingMayUseBigsSpeakEasyDifficultStyleFitMouthsTasksSimplicityPassagesTheatricalProprietyPompousCadenceDifficult TasksStilts
Book:Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
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“To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.”

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Book:Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
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“He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery.”

IfsWorldMindHumansWellsLittlesArtBookPhilosophyLife IsLyingChoicesNamesClassTakenOne ThingHuman NatureGreatnessEqualDegreesWeaknessCapacityMereIgnorantLengthIdleLotteryVersatility
Book:Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
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“A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill, which are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or trophy of themselves without them”

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Author:William Hazlitt
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“Tears may be considered as the natural and involuntary resource of the mind overcome by some sudden and violent emotion, before ithas had time to reconcile its feelings to the change in circumstances: while laughter may be defined to be the same sort of convulsive and involuntary movement, occasioned by mere sur prise or contrast (in the absence of any more serious emotion), before it has time to reconcile its belief to contradictory appearances.”

MindMayFeelingsBeliefNaturalEmotionCryMovementTearsSeriousCircumstancesLaughterResourcesOvercomingMereAppearanceAbsenceViolentDefinedContrastContradictoryReconcileInvoluntary
Book:Lectures on the English Comic Writers
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“A man who does not endeavour to seem more than he is will generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention to fashion is necessary.”

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Book:Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
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“Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs. The heaviest charge we can bring against the general texture of society is that it is commonplace. Our fancied superiority to others is in some one thing which we think most of because we excel in it, or have paid most attention to it; whilst we overlook their superiority to us in something else which they set equal and exclusive store by.”

ThinkingMenHardLevelsAttentionWiseImagineOne ThingFoolMetsEqualPaidAbsolutesSurfaceStoresGiantsSuperiorityExclusiveCommonplaceTextureDwarfs
Author:William Hazlitt
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