William Hazlitt Quotes

Man is, so to speak, an endless and infinitely varied repetition: and if we know what one man feels, we so far know what a thousand feel in the sanctuary of their being. Our feeling of general humanity is at once an aggregate of a thousand different truths, and it is also the same truth a thousand times told.

La naturaleza parece (cuanto más la observamos) hecha de aversiones: sin nada que odiar, perderíamos el auténtico resorte del pensamiento y de la acción. La vida se convertiría en una charca de agua estancada si no la agitaran los intereses opuestos y la pasiones irrefrenables de los hombres. La línea blanca de nuestro destino resplandece (o por lo menos se hace visible) cuando se oscurece al máximo su entorno, de la misma manera en que el arco iris pinta su propia forma sobre una nube. ¿Es orgullo? ¿Es envidia? ¿Es la fuerza del contraste? ¿Es debilidad o malicia? Lo cierto es que en la mente humana existe una atracción secreta, un ansia de maldad que encuentra un deleite perverso, y a la vez gozoso, en la fechoría, pues es una fuente inagotable de satisfacciones. La bondad absoluta no tarda en volverse insípida, carente de variedad y brío. El sufrimiento es agridulce, y no sacia nunca. El amor se convierte, con un poco de indulgencia, en indiferencia o en hastío: Únicamente el odio es inmortal.

The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.

But fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism: it is haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath — tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.

A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man.

Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life.

Defoe says, that there were a hundred thousand stout country-fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.

Prejudice is the child of ignorance…

Again, there is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have also their altars and their religion.

The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be as constantly wound up.

We all wear some disguise — make some professions — use some artifice to set ourselves off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom, though we may endeavour to keep some others that we think less to our credit as much as possible in the background…

Indeed some degree of affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body; we must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.

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

Gallantry to women (the sure road to their favor) is nothing but the appearance of extreme devotion to all their wants and wishes, a delight in their satisfaction, and a confidence in yourself as being able to contribute toward it.