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Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Intelligence
Genius
Humanity
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Rusts
Rust

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, anymore than they grow stronger or healthier or honest.
William Hazlitt
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To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said.
William Hazlitt
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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
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A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.
William Hazlitt
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Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The learned are mere literary drudges.
William Hazlitt
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Prejudice is the child of ignorance.
William Hazlitt
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Reflection brakes men cowards. There is no object that can be put in competition with life, unless it is viewed through the medium of passion, and we are hurried away by the impulse of the moment.
William Hazlitt
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There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.
William Hazlitt
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As is our confidence, so is our capacity.
William Hazlitt
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To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.
William Hazlitt
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Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.
William Hazlitt
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No really great man ever thought himself so.
William Hazlitt
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The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, No. There was a fire in the room.
William Hazlitt
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Experience makes us wise.
William Hazlitt
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Mankind are so ready to bestow their admiration on the dead, because the latter do not hear it, or because it gives no pleasure to the objects of it. Even fame is the offspring of envy.
William Hazlitt
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One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.
William Hazlitt
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It is better to drink of deep grief than to taste shallow pleasures.
William Hazlitt
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Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not, and to do what we cannot.
William Hazlitt
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He who lives wisely to himself and his own heart looks at the busy world through the loopholes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray.
William Hazlitt
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He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves.
William Hazlitt