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Quotes from The Plain Speaker — William Hazlitt

1778–1830 England

← All quotes by William Hazlitt

19 quotes

He who comes up to his own idea of greatness, must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

Learning is its own exceeding great reward; and at the period of which we speak, it bore other fruits, not unworthy of it.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

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

The Plain Speaker (1826)

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

For my own part, as I once said, I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

We grow tired of every thing but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

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.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

No really great man ever thought himself so.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

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

The Plain Speaker (1826)

Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it…

The Plain Speaker (1826)

Good temper is an estate for life…

The Plain Speaker (1826)

We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

Zeal will do more than knowledge.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

The way to secure success, is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it; the surest hindrance to it is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the discernment of the public.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

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.

The Plain Speaker (1826)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: William Hazlitt (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.