Quote

Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety.

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
Standard
Thoughtless
Sees
Conceited
Ignorant
Wonderfully
Standards
Propriety
Anyone
Expects
Character
Mainly
Everything
Conform
Must
Surprised

More quotes by William Hazlitt

Image
Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.
William Hazlitt
Image
Death puts an end to rivalship and competition. The dead can boast no advantage over us, nor can we triumph over them.
William Hazlitt
Image
Elegance is something more than ease it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling, spirited yet delicate.
William Hazlitt
Image
Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.
William Hazlitt
Image
Principle is a passion for truth.
William Hazlitt
Image
We may be willing to tell a story twice, never to hear it more than once.
William Hazlitt
Image
We do not attend to the advice of the sage and experienced because we think they are old, forgetting that they once were young and placed in the same situations as ourselves.
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
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
Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter, we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.
William Hazlitt
Image
The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.
William Hazlitt
Image
A man who is determined never to move out of the beaten road cannot lose his way.
William Hazlitt
Image
It is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying on itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things.
William Hazlitt
Image
The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear great ones as well as we can.
William Hazlitt
Image
The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.
William Hazlitt
Image
If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power.
William Hazlitt
Image
A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.
William Hazlitt
Image
Gallantry to women - the sure road to their favor - is nothing but the appearance of extreme devotion to all their wants and wishes, a delight in their satisfaction, and a confidence in yourself as being able to contribute toward it
William Hazlitt
Image
I have a much greater ambition to be the best racket player than the best prose writer.
William Hazlitt
Image
They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
William Hazlitt