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There cannot be a surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Thinking
Innate
Origin
Disposition
Proof
Lows
Genteel
Talking
Gentility
Cannot
Surer
Always
Meanness

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.
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The discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetness and cement of friendship.
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To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
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Life is the art of being well deceived.
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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.
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First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.
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The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it.
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Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.
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A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.
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A King (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.
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If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.
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The more a man writes, the more he can write.
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Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference.
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Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.
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It is easier taking the beaten path than making our way over bogs and precipices. The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information.
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Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) - neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.
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A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them.
William Hazlitt
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Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.
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Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.
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The amiable is the voluptuous in expression or manner. The sense of pleasure in ourselves is that which excites it in others or, the art of pleasing is to seem pleased.
William Hazlitt