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If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Human
Genius
Humans
Learning
Study
Reading
Read
Insignificance
Force
Commentators
Wish
Shakespeare
May
Intelligence

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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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.
William Hazlitt
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The vices are never so well employed as in combating one another.
William Hazlitt
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He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.
William Hazlitt
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The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.
William Hazlitt
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The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.
William Hazlitt
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Believe all the good you can of everyone. Do not measure others by yourself. If they have advantages which you have not, let your liberality keep pace with their good fortune. Envy no one, and you need envy no one.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
William Hazlitt
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The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.
William Hazlitt
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Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it.
William Hazlitt
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No really great man ever thought himself so.
William Hazlitt
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The Irish are hearty, the Scotch plausible, the French polite, the Germans good-natured, the Italians courtly, the Spaniards reserved and decorous - the English alone seem to exist in taking and giving offense.
William Hazlitt
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Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him.
William Hazlitt
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Painting gives the object itself poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it.
William Hazlitt
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Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.
William Hazlitt
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Within my heart is lurking suspicion, and base fear, and shame and hate but above all, tyrannous love sits throned, crowned with her graces, silent and in tears.
William Hazlitt
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One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey but I like to go by myself.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.
William Hazlitt
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There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which, we often yield as to a resistless power nor can he reasonably expect, the confidence of others who too apparently distrusts himself.
William Hazlitt