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Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Mask
Vice
Vices
Habit
Virtue
Nature
Men

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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I am always afraid of a fool. One cannot be sure that he is not a knave as well.
William Hazlitt
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Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.
William Hazlitt
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To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.
William Hazlitt
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The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously, and those who have produced immortal works have done so without knowing how or why.
William Hazlitt
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A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill, which are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or trophy of themselves without them
William Hazlitt
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Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman dignity is proper to noblemen and majesty to kings.
William Hazlitt
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Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity.
William Hazlitt
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The wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest yearning after happiness and to desire is in some sense to enjoy.
William Hazlitt
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A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.
William Hazlitt
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Power is pleasure and pleasure sweetens pain.
William Hazlitt
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It is not fit that every man should travel it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
William Hazlitt
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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
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The rule for traveling abroad is to take our common sense with us, and leave our prejudices behind.
William Hazlitt
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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
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We prefer ourselves to others, only because we a have more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person's.
William Hazlitt
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Humanity is to be met with in a den of robbers.
William Hazlitt
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We had rather do anything than acknowledge the merit of another if we can help it. We cannot bear a superior or an equal. Hence ridicule is sure to prevail over truth, for the malice of mankind, thrown into the scale, gives the casting weight.
William Hazlitt
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The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne from a sort of dignity belonging to them.
William Hazlitt
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We are all of us, more or less, the slaves of opinion.
William Hazlitt
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Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.
William Hazlitt