Quote

Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Language
Veil
Ideas
Adds
Giving
Veils
Like
Add
Atmosphere
Naked
Softness
Objects
Refinement
Gives
Throws

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Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.
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There is an unseemly exposure of the mind, as well as of the body.
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Cowardice is not synonymous with prudence. It often happens that the better part of discretion is valor.
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The affected modesty of most women is a decoy for the generous, the delicate, and unsuspecting while the artful, the bold, and unfeeling either see or break through its slender disguises.
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Despair swallows up cowardice.
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In public speaking, we must appeal either to the prejudices of others, or to the love of truth and justice. If we think merely of displaying our own ability, we shall ruin every cause we undertake.
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The devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate he supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him.
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We can scarcely hate anyone that we know.
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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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Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.
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Knowledge is pleasure as well as power.
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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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The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.
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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.
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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.
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We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
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A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.
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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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The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it.
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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