Quote

Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols -- it is all that they ask the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.

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
Truth
Distinction
Give
Worse
Right
Atheism
Incorrigible
Giving
Mankind
Distinctions
Good
Asks
Superstitions
Race
Idols
Wrong
Falsehood
Evil
Indifferent

More quotes by William Hazlitt

Image
The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men.
William Hazlitt
Image
Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.
William Hazlitt
Image
Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit -- or a mask. . . . The foregoing maxim shows the difference between truth and sarcasm.
William Hazlitt
Image
We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
William Hazlitt
Image
Envy is littleness of soul.
William Hazlitt
Image
Nothing precludes sympathy so much as a perfect indifference to it
William Hazlitt
Image
The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science is the desire to accept false causes rather than none or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
William Hazlitt
Image
The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.
William Hazlitt
Image
The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.
William Hazlitt
Image
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.
William Hazlitt
Image
Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?
William Hazlitt
Image
Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.
William Hazlitt
Image
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
Image
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
Image
A felon could plead benefit of clergy and be saved by [reading aloud] what was aptly enough termed the neck verse, which was very usually the Miserere mei of Psalm 51.
William Hazlitt
Image
An honest man is respected by all parties.
William Hazlitt
Image
If our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as little note of them as the dial does of those that are clouded.
William Hazlitt
Image
If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power.
William Hazlitt
Image
We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves.
William Hazlitt
Image
There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.
William Hazlitt