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Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Voluntary
Aspect
Poverty
Takes
Never
Despicable

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to ranking spleen and bigotry it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness.
William Hazlitt
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Actors are the only honest hypocrites.
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Violence ever defeats its own ends. Where you cannot drive you can always persuade. A gentle word, a kind look, a god-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles. There is a secret pride in every human heart than revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.
William Hazlitt
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It is only those who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to blood invariably on abstract ideas, that ever feel ennui.
William Hazlitt
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The discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetness and cement of friendship.
William Hazlitt
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There is some virtue in almost every vice, except hypocrisy and even that, while it is a mockery of virtue, is at the same time a compliment to it.
William Hazlitt
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It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, anymore than they grow stronger or healthier or honest.
William Hazlitt
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In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.
William Hazlitt
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The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice.
William Hazlitt
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There is a quiet repose and steadiness about the happiness of age, if the life has been well spent. Its feebleness is not painful. The nervous system has lost its acuteness. But, in mature years we feel that a burn, a scald, a cut, is more tolerable than it was in the sensitive period of youth.
William Hazlitt
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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
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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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The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors.
William Hazlitt
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Our contempt for others proves nothing but the illiberality and narrowness of our own views.
William Hazlitt
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Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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Painting gives the object itself poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it.
William Hazlitt
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Genius is native to the soil where it grows — is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun — and is not a hot - house plant or an exotic.
William Hazlitt
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All is without form and void. Someone said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing and very like.
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A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.
William Hazlitt