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Whatever excites the spirit of contradiction is capable of producing the last effects of heroism which is only the highest pitch of obstinacy, in a good or bad cause, in wisdom or folly.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Cause
Pitch
Wisdom
Heroism
Causes
Producing
Whatever
Contradiction
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Folly
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Capable
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Effects
Obstinacy
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More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.
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The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.
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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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Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.
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A nickname is the hardest stone that the devil can throw at a man.
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I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth... I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them.
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Comedy naturally wears itself out - destroys the very food on which it lives and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at.
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When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.
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The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out.
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Genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength.
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Love at first sight is only realizing an imagination that has always haunted us or meeting with a face, a figure, or cast of expression in perfection that we have seen and admired in a less degree or in less favorable circumstances a hundred times before.
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There is room enough in human life to crowd almost every art and science in it. If we pass no day without a line-visit no place without the company of a book-we may with ease fill libraries or empty them of their contents. The more we do, the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.
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To impress the idea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it.
William Hazlitt
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Prejudice is the child of ignorance.
William Hazlitt
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The best way to make ourselves agreeable to others is by seeming to think them so. If we appear fully sensible of their good qualities they will not complain of the want of them in us.
William Hazlitt
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Anyone who has passed though the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.
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The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life.
William Hazlitt
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Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.
William Hazlitt
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A thought must tell at once, or not at all.
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We prefer a person with vivacity and high spirits, though bordering upon insolence, to the timid and pusillanimous we are fonder of wit joined to malice than of dullness without it.
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