William Hazlitt Quotes

Man is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.

All is without form and void. Someone said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing and very like.

There is an unseemly exposure of mind, as well as of the body.

The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it.

But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.

So have I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.

Well, I’ve had a happy life.

The origin of all science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.

His sayings are generally like women’s letters; all the pith is in the postscript.

Mr Wordsworth’s genius is a pure emanation of the Spirit of the Age. Had he lived in any other period of the world, he would never have been heard of.

He writes as fast as they can read, and he does not write himself down… His worst is better than any other person’s best… His works (taken together) are almost like a new edition of human nature. This is indeed to be an author!

The present is an age of talkers, and not of 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 dote on past achievement.

Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization.

He is a kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country.

It takes up no falling cause; fights no uphill battle; advocates no great principle; holds out a helping hand to no oppressed or obscure individual. It is ‘ever strong upon the stronger side’.

It is a commercial paper, a paper of business, and it is conducted on principles of trade and business. It floats with the tide: it sails with the stream. It has no other principle.

The Times is, we suppose, entitled to the character it gives of itself, of being the ‘leading journal of Europe’, and is perhaps the greatest engine of temporary opinion in the world.

Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours’ march to dinner—and then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths.

You will hear more good things on the outside of a stagecoach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university.