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Quote by William Hazlitt

Work

Sketches and Essays

This volume compiles a selection of sketches and essays, offering readers a diverse range of perspectives and reflections on life, society, and the human condition. more

Author

William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt, born on April 10, 1778, was an influential English essayist and literary critic. His works are renowned for their sharp observations and profound insights, which have had a lasting impact on 19th-century British literature. more

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“For all parts of the body that we see fit to expose to the wind and air are found fit to endure it: face, feet, hands, legs, shoulders, head, according as custom invites us. For if there is a part of us that is tender and that seems as though it should fear the cold, it should be the stomach, where digestion takes place; our fathers left it uncovered, and our ladies, soft and delicate as they are, sometimes go half bare down to the navel.”

“Man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.”

“Adam and Eve entered the world naked and unashamed - naked and pure-minded. And no descendant of theirs has ever entered it otherwise. All have entered it naked, unashamed, and clean in mind. They entered it modest. They had to acquire immodesty in the soiled mind, there was no other way to get it. ... The convention mis-called "modesty" has no standard, and cannot have one, because it is opposed to nature and reason and is therefore an artificiality and subject to anyone's whim - anyone's diseased caprice.”

“How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?”