William Hazlitt
The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, "No. There was a fire in the room."Collection: Princess
The surest hindrance of success is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the judgment of the public. He who is determined not to be satisfied with anything short of perfection will never do anything to please himself or others.Collection: Perfection
Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.Collection: Men
Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him.Collection: Men
There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.Collection: Integrity
Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.Collection: Men
The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desires of the soul, and of which it never tires.Collection: Soul
It is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying on itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things.Collection: Struggle
A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them.Collection: Self
Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own, and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image of itself. Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant objects please because they border on its confines and are moulded by its touch.Collection: Passion
It has been the resolution of mankind in all ages of the world. No people, no age, ever threw away the fruits of past wisdom, or the enjoyment of present blessings, for visionary schemes of ideal perfection. It is the knowledge of the past, the actual infliction of the present, that has produced all changes, all innovations, and all improvements - not (as is pretended) the chimerical anticipation of possible advantages, but the intolerable pressure of long-established, notorious, aggravated, and growing abuses.Collection: Blessing
General principles are not the less true or important because from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it.Collection: Philosophy
Affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body.Collection: Mind
Learning is its own exceeding great reward; and at the period of which we speak, it bore other fruits, not unworthy of it.Collection: Rewards
We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues.Collection: Opportunity
Like a rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of going home, or that it will soon be night.Collection: Home
There are persons who are never easy unless they are putting your books and papers in order--that is, according to their notions of the matter--and hide things lest they should be lost, where neither the owner nor anybody else can find them. This is a sort of magpie faculty. If anything is left where you want it, it is called litter. There is a pedantry in housewifery, as well as in the gravest concerns. Abraham Tucker complained that whenever his maid servant had been in his library, he could not see comfortably to work again for several days.Collection: Book
The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.Collection: Self Esteem
The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear great ones as well as we can.Collection: Grief
There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!Collection: Names
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.Collection: Perseverance
There cannot be a surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel.Collection: Thinking
Violence ever defeats its own ends. Where you cannot drive you can always persuade. A gentle word, a kind look, a god-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles. There is a secret pride in every human heart than revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.Collection: Respect
Poverty is the test of civility and the touchstone of friendship.Collection: Tests
We learn to curb our will and keep our overt actions within the bounds of humanity, long before we can subdue our sentiments and imaginations to the same mild tone.Collection: Anger
Habit is necessary to give power.Collection: Giving
Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.Collection: Lying
Habit in most cases hardens and encrusts by taking away the keener edge of our sensations: but does it not in others quicken and refine, by giving a mechanical facility and by engrafting an acquired sense?Collection: Giving
The youth is better than the old age of friendship.Collection: Friendship
If we are long absent from our friends, we forget them; if we are constantly with them, we despise them.Collection: Friends
The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.Collection: Simple
Those who wish to forget painful thoughts do well to absent themselves for a while from, the ties and objects that recall them; but we can be said only to fulfill our destiny in the place that gave us birth.Collection: Destiny
A man is a hypocrite only when he affects to take a delight in what he does not feel, not because he takes a perverse delight in opposite things.Collection: Hypocrite
Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism ... tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.Collection: Fashion
There is a quiet repose and steadiness about the happiness of age, if the life has been well spent. Its feebleness is not painful. The nervous system has lost its acuteness. But, in mature years we feel that a burn, a scald, a cut, is more tolerable than it was in the sensitive period of youth.Collection: Cutting
Without life there can be no action — no objects of pursuit — no restless desires — no tormenting passions. Hence it is that we fondly cling to it — that we dread its termination as the close, not of enjoyment, but of hope.Collection: Hope
A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.Collection: Men
Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment; hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had and have no wish for.Collection: Real
The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.Collection: Anger
Horus non numero nisi serenas (I count only the sunny hours).Collection: Time
We may be willing to tell a story twice, never to hear it more than once.Collection: Stories
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.Collection: Memories
A mighty stream of tendency.Collection: Evolution
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.Collection: Feelings
We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into a union by all the intolerance in the world. If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary rules.Collection: Book
Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety.Collection: Character
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! ... I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.Collection: Heart
The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it.Collection: Speak
The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.Collection: Exercise