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Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Must
Vigor
Great
Lofty
Always
Improving
Eminence
Never
Patient
Wary
Men
Greatness
Ascent
People
Steps
Steep
Natural
Boldness
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Seize

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both.
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Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart.
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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 way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it.
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Diffidence and awkwardness are antidotes to love.
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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.
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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.
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The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.
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We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
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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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It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.
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Like a rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of going home, or that it will soon be night.
William Hazlitt
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The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.
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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.
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Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust hatred alone is immortal.
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You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
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Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not, and to do what we cannot.
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Charity, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Next to putting it in a bank, men like to squander their superfluous wealth on those to whom it is sure to be doing the least possible good.
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Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.
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The discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetness and cement of friendship.
William Hazlitt