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What passes in the world for talent or dexterity or enterprise is often only a want of moral principle. We may succeed where others fail, not from a greater share of invention, but from not being nice in the choice of expedients.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Moral
Choice
Expedients
Often
Failing
Dexterity
Others
Talent
Passes
May
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World
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Invention
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More quotes by William Hazlitt

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A man who does not endeavour to seem more than he is will generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention to fashion is necessary.
William Hazlitt
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We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.
William Hazlitt
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The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.
William Hazlitt
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Death puts an end to rivalship and competition. The dead can boast no advantage over us, nor can we triumph over them.
William Hazlitt
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A King (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.
William Hazlitt
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It is a false principle that because we are entirely occupied with ourselves, we must equally occupy the thoughts of others. The contrary inference is the fair one.
William Hazlitt
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Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?
William Hazlitt
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Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.
William Hazlitt
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The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.
William Hazlitt
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Habit in most cases hardens and encrusts by taking away the keener edge of our sensations: but does it not in others quicken and refine, by giving a mechanical facility and by engrafting an acquired sense?
William Hazlitt
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Rules and models destroy genius and art.
William Hazlitt
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It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.
William Hazlitt
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When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
William Hazlitt
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A distinction has been made between acuteness and subtlety of understanding. This might be illustrated by saying that acuteness consists in taking up the points or solid atoms, subtlety in feeling the air of truth.
William Hazlitt
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Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength. There is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage.
William Hazlitt
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What are the publications that succeed? Those that pretend to teach the public that the persons they have been accustomed unwittingly to look up to as the lights of the earth are no better than themselves.
William Hazlitt
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The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way ... an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.
William Hazlitt
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Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.
William Hazlitt