Quote

No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness.

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
Greatness
Dignity
Terminating
Constitutes

More quotes by William Hazlitt

Image
Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.
William Hazlitt
Image
The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass to their daily affairs and experience to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.
William Hazlitt
Image
The safest kind of praise is to foretell that another will become great in some particular way. It has the greatest show of magnanimity and the least of it in reality.
William Hazlitt
Image
Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.
William Hazlitt
Image
As is our confidence, so is our capacity.
William Hazlitt
Image
Prosperity is a great teacher adversity a greater.
William Hazlitt
Image
Languages happily restrict the mind to what is of its own native growth and fitted for it, as rivers and mountains bond countries or the empire of learning, as well as states, would become unwieldy and overgrown.
William Hazlitt
Image
I'm not smart, but I like to observe. Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.
William Hazlitt
Image
Without life there can be no action — no objects of pursuit — no restless desires — no tormenting passions. Hence it is that we fondly cling to it — that we dread its termination as the close, not of enjoyment, but of hope.
William Hazlitt
Image
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
Image
Prejudice is the child of ignorance.
William Hazlitt
Image
The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.
William Hazlitt
Image
Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.
William Hazlitt
Image
Popularity is neither fame nor greatness.
William Hazlitt
Image
From the height from which the great look down on the world all the rest of mankind seem equal.
William Hazlitt
Image
Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood.
William Hazlitt
Image
The soul of dispatch is decision.
William Hazlitt
Image
So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.
William Hazlitt
Image
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.
William Hazlitt
Image
Persons who undertake to pry into, or cleanse out all the filth of a common sewer, either cannot have very nice noses, or will soon lose them.
William Hazlitt