Book detail: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt]. is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This book is a compilation of concise, thought-provoking statements that delve into various aspects of human nature, ethics, and social behavior, reflecting the author's engagement with the works of Rochefoucault.
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“Those only deserve a monument who do not need one.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Our contempt for others proves nothing but the illiberality and narrowness of our own views.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Those who object to wit are envious of it.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“With women, the great business of life is love; and they generally make a mistake in it. They consult neither the heart nor the head, but are led away by mere humour and fancy. If instead of a companion for life, they had to choose a partner in a country-dance or to trifle away an hour with, their mode of calculation would be right. They tie their true-lover's knot with idle, thoughtless haste, while the institutions of society render it indissoluble.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The fear of punishment may be necessary to the suppression of vice; but it also suspends the finer motives of virtue.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Those only deserve a monument who do not need one; that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“In love we do not think of moral qualities, and scarcely of intellectual ones. Temperament and manner alone, with beauty, excite love.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The number of objects we see from living in a large city amuses the mind like a perpetual raree-show, without supplying it with any ideas.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The amiable is the voluptuous in expression or manner. The sense of pleasure in ourselves is that which excites it in others; or, the art of pleasing is to seem pleased.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Poverty is the test of civility and the touchstone of friendship.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dulness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority; natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“As is our confidence, so is our capacity.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The seat of knowledge is in the head; of wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong, if we do not feel right.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Reflection makes men cowards.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The most learned are often the most narrow minded.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Those who can command themselves command others.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“In some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“We are governed by sympathy; and the extent of our sympathy is determined by that of our sensibility”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter, we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof. The throwing out [of] malicious imputations against any character leaves a stain, which no after-refutation can wipe out. To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said. The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Mankind are a herd of knaves and fools. It is necessary to join the crowd, or get out of their way, in order not to be trampled to death by them.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The insolence of the vulgar is in proportion to their ignorance. They treat everything with contempt which they do not understand.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The secret of the difficulties of those people who make a great deal of money, and yet are always in want of it, is this-they throw it away as soon as they get it on the first whim or extravagance that strikes them, and have nothing left to meet ordinary expenses or discharge old debts.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].