Quote

A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.

William Hazlitt

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Though
Nickname
Stills
Nicknames
Still
Apprehension
Believe
Stone
Men
Throw
Bugbear
Stones
Apprehensions
Devil
Heaviest
Imagination
Haunts

More quotes by William Hazlitt

Image
Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others.
William Hazlitt
Image
It is a false principle that because we are entirely occupied with ourselves, we must equally occupy the thoughts of others. The contrary inference is the fair one.
William Hazlitt
Image
If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.
William Hazlitt
Image
An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence a vain man, in order that it may.
William Hazlitt
Image
No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
William Hazlitt
Image
The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.
William Hazlitt
Image
Every man, in judging of himself, is his own contemporary. He may feel the gale of popularity, but he cannot tell how long it will last. His opinion of himself wants distance, wants time, wants numbers, to set it off and confirm it.
William Hazlitt
Image
Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman dignity is proper to noblemen and majesty to kings.
William Hazlitt
Image
It is only necessary to raise a bugbear before the English imagination in order to govern it at will. Whatever they hate or fear, they implicitly believe in, merely from the scope it gives to these passions.
William Hazlitt
Image
The assumption of merit is easier, less embarrassing, and more effectual than the actual attainment of it.
William Hazlitt
Image
The corpse of friendship is not worth embalming.
William Hazlitt
Image
We prefer a person with vivacity and high spirits, though bordering upon insolence, to the timid and pusillanimous we are fonder of wit joined to malice than of dullness without it.
William Hazlitt
Image
The secret of the difficulties of those people who make a great deal of money, and yet are always in want of it, is this-they throw it away as soon as they get it on the first whim or extravagance that strikes them, and have nothing left to meet ordinary expenses or discharge old debts.
William Hazlitt
Image
The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out.
William Hazlitt
Image
The best way to make ourselves agreeable to others is by seeming to think them so. If we appear fully sensible of their good qualities they will not complain of the want of them in us.
William Hazlitt
Image
Faith is necessary to victory.
William Hazlitt
Image
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.
William Hazlitt
Image
True friendship is self-love at second hand where, as in a flattering mirror we may see our virtues magnified and our errors softened, and where we may fancy our opinion of ourselves confirmed by an impartial and faithful witness.
William Hazlitt
Image
We have more faith in a well-written romance while we are reading it than in common history. The vividness of the representations in the one case more than counterbalances the mere knowledge of the truth of facts in the other.
William Hazlitt
Image
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.
William Hazlitt