Tag: William Hazlitt

The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.

William Hazlitt

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

William Hazlitt

I am no politician, and still less can I be said to be a party-man : I have a hatred of tyranny, and a contempt for its tools; and this feeling I have expressed as often and as strongly as I could. I cannot sit quietly down under the claims of barefaced power, and have tried to expose the little arts of sophistry by which they are defended. I have no mind to have my person made a property of, nor my understanding made a dupe of. I deny that liberty and slavery are convertible terms, that right and wrong, truth and falsehood, plenty and famine, the comforts or wretchedness of a people, are matters of perfect indifference. That is all I know of the matter; but on these points I am likely to remain incorrigible, in spite of any arguments that I have seen used to the contrary. It needs no sagacity to discover that two and two make four; but to persist in maintaining this obvious position, if all the fashion, authority, hypocrisy, and venality of mankind were arrayed against it, would require a considerable effort of personal courage, and would soon leave a man in a very formidable minority.

William Hazlitt

The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.

William Hazlitt

The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.

William Hazlitt

The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favour.

William Hazlitt

Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope; and few are reduced so low as that.

William Hazlitt

No young man believes he shall ever die.  There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amends for everything. To be young is to be as one of the Immortals.

William Hazlitt