William Hazlitt
One said a tooth drawer was a kind of unconscionable trade, because his trade was nothing else but to take away those things whereby every man gets his living.Collection: Men
Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference.Collection: Facts
Walk groundly, talk profoundly, drink roundly, sleep soundly.Collection: Sleep
People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking.Collection: Talking
Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.Collection: Beauty Everywhere
As we advance in life, we acquire a keener sense of the value of time. Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence; and we become misers in this respect.Collection: Inspirational
A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer - that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.Collection: Silly
A felon could plead "benefit of clergy" and be saved by [reading aloud] what was aptly enough termed the "neck verse", which was very usually the Miserere mei of Psalm 51.Collection: Book
Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs.Collection: Wise
The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.Collection: Thinking
They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.Collection: Gratitude
Whatever interests is interesting.Collection: Interesting
They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.Collection: Dream
An accomplished coquette excites the passions of others, in proportion as she feels none herself.Collection: Passion
The soul of dispatch is decision.Collection: Decision
Political truth is libel; religious truth, blasphemy.Collection: Religious
The last sort I shall mention are verbal critics - mere word-catchers, fellows that pick out a word in a sentence and a sentence in a volume, and tell you it is wrong. The title of Ultra-Crepidarian critics has been given to a variety of this species.Collection: Titles
That humanity and sincerity which dispose men to resist injustice and tyranny render them unfit to cope with the cunning and power of those who are opposed to them. The friends of liberty trust to the professions of others because they are themselves sincere, and endeavour to secure the public good with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who have no regard to anything but their own unprincipled ends, and stick at nothing to accomplish them.Collection: Hurt
Our notions with respect to the importance of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery. The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but of our passions.Collection: Passion
The great have private feelings of their own, to which the interests of humanity and justice must curtsy. Their interests are so far from being the same as those of the community, that they are in direct and necessary opposition to them; their power is at the expense of OUR weakness; their riches of OUR poverty; their pride of OUR degradation; their splendour of OUR wretchedness; their tyranny of OUR servitude.Collection: Pride
Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength. There is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage.Collection: Weakness
No man can thoroughly master more than one art or science.Collection: Art
However we may flatter ourselves to the contrary, our friends think no higher of us than the world do. They see us through the jaundiced or distrustful eyes of others. They may know better, but their feelings are governed by popular prejudice. Nay, they are more shy of us (when under a cloud) than even strangers; for we involve them in a common disgrace, or compel them to embroil themselves in continual quarrels and disputes in our defense.Collection: Eye
The fear of punishment may be necessary to the suppression of vice; but it also suspends the finer motives of virtue.Collection: Punishment
To the proud the slightest repulse or disappointment is the last indignity.Collection: Disappointment
There are some persons who never succeed from being too indolent to undertake anything; and others who regularly fail, because the instant they find success in their power, they grow indifferent, and give over the attempt.Collection: Giving
Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart.Collection: Heart
Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.Collection: Gratitude
Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.Collection: Vanity
A woman's vanity is interested in making the object of her choice the god of her idolatry.Collection: Vanity
I maintain that there is no common language or medium of understanding between people of education and without it - between those who judge of things from books or from their senses. Ignorance has so far the advantage over learning; for it can make an appeal to you from what you know; but you cannot re-act upon it through that which it is a perfect stranger to. Ignorance is, therefore, power.Collection: Book
The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way ... an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.Collection: Religious
One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole or ace, than if one has never had a chance of winning it.Collection: Failure
To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.Collection: Character
...greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into itself.Collection: Greatness
A King (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.Collection: Kings
He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves.Collection: Believe
It is easier taking the beaten path than making our way over bogs and precipices. The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information.Collection: Philosophy
The assumption of merit is easier, less embarrassing, and more effectual than the actual attainment of it.Collection: Genius
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.Collection: Quality
The wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest yearning after happiness; and to desire is in some sense to enjoy.Collection: Happiness
Natural affection is a prejudice; for though we have cause to love our nearest connections better than others, we have no reason to think them better than others.Collection: Friendship
The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life.Collection: Death
What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.Collection: Fashion
We are not satisfied to be right, unless we can prove others to be quite wrong.Collection: Satisfied
Persons of slender intellectual stamina dread competition, as dwarfs are afraid of being run over in the street.Collection: Running
Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know.Collection: Scholarship
Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.Collection: Rights
Spleen can subsist on any kind of food.Collection: Anger