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The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to ranking spleen and bigotry it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Hate
Excuse
Eats
Makes
Virtue
Famine
Spleen
Spirit
Land
Lands
Mineral
Nothing
Fire
Bigotry
Pestilence
Heart
Justice
Carrying
Ranking
Like
Pleasure
Patriotism
Minerals
Turns
Leaves
Poisonous
Religion
Diversity
Hating

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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A man in love prefers his passion to every other consideration, and is fonder of his mistress than he is of virtue. Should she prove vicious, she makes vice lovely in his eyes.
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Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.
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We are fonder of visiting our friends in health than in sickness. We judge less favorably of their characters when any misfortune happens to them and a lucky hit, either in business or reputation, improves even their personal appearance in our eyes.
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To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
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A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.
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Prosperity is a great teacher adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind privation trains and strengthens it.
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It is better to desire than to enjoy, to love than to be loved.
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Persons of slender intellectual stamina dread competition, as dwarfs are afraid of being run over in the street.
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Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself.
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Pride goes before a fall, they say, And yet we often find, The folks who throw all pride away Most often fall behind.
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Man is an intellectual animal, and therefore an everlasting contradiction to himself. His senses centre in himself, his ideas reach to the ends of the universe so that he is torn in pieces between the two, without a possibility of its ever being otherwise.
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To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.
William Hazlitt
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The public is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice.
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The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.
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There is nothing good to be had in the country, or if there is, they will not let you have it.
William Hazlitt
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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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A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn.
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The look of a gentleman is little else than the reflection of the looks of the world.
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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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By despising all that has preceded us, we teach others to despise ourselves.
William Hazlitt