Quote

Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?

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
Words
Stones
Hill
Facts
Argument
Rolling
Trying
Empty
Hills
Time
Prove
Stone
Like
Causes
Passed
Looking
Teeth
Dark
Findings
Water
Finding
Pouring

More quotes by William Hazlitt

Image
A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.
William Hazlitt
Image
Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps.
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
Image
The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.
William Hazlitt
Image
The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.
William Hazlitt
Image
Those who are pleased with the fewest things know the least, as those who are pleased with everything know nothing.
William Hazlitt
Image
When we forget old friends, it is a sign we have forgotten ourselves.
William Hazlitt
Image
A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.
William Hazlitt
Image
The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.
William Hazlitt
Image
Love may turn to indifference with possession.
William Hazlitt
Image
Tyrants forego all respect for humanity in proportion as they are sunk beneath it. Taught to believe themselves of a different species, they really become so, lose their participation with their kind, and in mimicking the god dwindle into the brute.
William Hazlitt
Image
The essence of poetry is will and passion.
William Hazlitt
Image
To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.
William Hazlitt
Image
It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.
William Hazlitt
Image
We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.
William Hazlitt
Image
Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety.
William Hazlitt
Image
The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear great ones as well as we can.
William Hazlitt
Image
We must be doing something to be happy.
William Hazlitt
Image
A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.
William Hazlitt
Image
Asleep, nobody is a hypocrite
William Hazlitt