Quote

In some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Talk
Situations
Whether
Vanity
Thought
Dull
Seems
Case
Nothing
Cases
Predominates
Hard
Question
Impertinent
Called
Prudence
Situation
Arrogant

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If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power.
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In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide from feeling, and not from reason. If we were obliged to enter into a theoretical deliberation on every occasion before we act, life would be at a stand, and Art would be impracticable.
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It is better to drink of deep grief than to taste shallow pleasures.
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There is some virtue in almost every vice, except hypocrisy and even that, while it is a mockery of virtue, is at the same time a compliment to it.
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The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.
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Those only deserve a monument who do not need one that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.
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Knowledge is pleasure as well as power.
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The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors. The first he does not admit of - the last he does not concern himself about.
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The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice.
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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.
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When one can do better than everyone else in the same walk, one does not make any very painful exertions to outdo oneself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.
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I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began.
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Affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body.
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The amiable is the voluptuous in expression or manner. The sense of pleasure in ourselves is that which excites it in others or, the art of pleasing is to seem pleased.
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Painters... are the most lively observers of what passes in the world about them, and the closest observers of what passes in their own minds.
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He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.
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First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.
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The discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetness and cement of friendship.
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An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence a vain man, in order that it may.
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