Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Power
Leaves
Constructs
Without
Greatness
Confined
Terminating
Image
Apply
Trophy
Great
Skills
Display
Displays
Men
Player
Skill
Trophies
World
Effort
Trials
Constitutes
Individual
Permanent
Momentary
Found
Chess
Construct

More quotes by William Hazlitt

Image
Those who have the largest hearts have the soundest understandings and they are the truest philosophers who can forget themselves.
William Hazlitt
Image
Good temper is one of the great preservers of the features.
William Hazlitt
Image
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
Image
We grow tired of ourselves, much more of other people.
William Hazlitt
Image
What is popular is not necessarily vulgar and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.
William Hazlitt
Image
I am then never less alone than when alone
William Hazlitt
Image
To be forward to praise others implies either great eminence, that can afford to, part with applause or great quickness of discernment, with confidence in our own judgments or great sincerity and love of truth, getting the better of our self-love.
William Hazlitt
Image
Humanity is to be met with in a den of robbers.
William Hazlitt
Image
It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.
William Hazlitt
Image
To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.
William Hazlitt
Image
Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity.
William Hazlitt
Image
The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.
William Hazlitt
Image
Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.
William Hazlitt
Image
Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.
William Hazlitt
Image
A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common.
William Hazlitt
Image
Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The learned are mere literary drudges.
William Hazlitt
Image
The expression of a gentleman's face is not so much that of refinement, as of flexibility, not of sensibility and enthusiasm as of indifference it argues presence of mind rather than enlargement of ideas.
William Hazlitt
Image
A wise traveler never despises his own country.
William Hazlitt
Image
Experience makes us wise.
William Hazlitt
Image
Reflection brakes men cowards. There is no object that can be put in competition with life, unless it is viewed through the medium of passion, and we are hurried away by the impulse of the moment.
William Hazlitt