Quote

We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Choose
Friend
Particular
Flatters
Often
Circumstance
Self
Mistress
Love
Excellence
Merely
Circumstances

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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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.
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The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.
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A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn.
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Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.
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The most learned are often the most narrow minded.
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A great man la an abstraction of some one excellence but whoever fancies himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of excellence or defect of himself or others.
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Whatever interests is interesting.
William Hazlitt
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He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan.
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You are never tired of painting, because you have to set down not what you know already, but what you have just discovered.
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It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.
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Shall I faint, now that I have poured out the spirit of my mind to the world, and treated many subjects with truth, with freedom, with power, because I have been followed with one cry of abuse ever since for not being a Government tool?
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Prosperity is a great teacher adversity a greater.
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Humour is the making others act or talk absurdly and unconsciously wit is the pointing out and ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more or less ill-nature.
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Books wind into the heart.
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No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.
William Hazlitt
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Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.
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The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty.
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There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. I count only the hours that are serene..
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No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
William Hazlitt
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A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dulness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.
William Hazlitt