Quote

Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident wit is the product of art and fancy.

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
Growth
Humour
Funny
Accident
Art
Wit
Else
Compare
Contrasting
Nature
Fancy
Ludicrous
Something
Accidents
Comparing
Product
Exposing
Products
Describing

More quotes by William Hazlitt

Image
Believe all the good you can of everyone. Do not measure others by yourself. If they have advantages which you have not, let your liberality keep pace with their good fortune. Envy no one, and you need envy no one.
William Hazlitt
Image
Those who object to wit are envious of it.
William Hazlitt
Image
The present is an age of talkers, and not of doers and the reason is, that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and dote on past achievement.
William Hazlitt
Image
The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.
William Hazlitt
Image
Wrong dressed out in pride, pomp, and circumstance has more attraction than abstract right.
William Hazlitt
Image
A great man la an abstraction of some one excellence but whoever fancies himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of excellence or defect of himself or others.
William Hazlitt
Image
Sincerity has to do with the connexion between our words and thoughts, and not between our beliefs and actions.
William Hazlitt
Image
Painters... are the most lively observers of what passes in the world about them, and the closest observers of what passes in their own minds.
William Hazlitt
Image
That which is not, shall never be that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident.
William Hazlitt
Image
We are not hypocrites in our sleep.
William Hazlitt
Image
No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.
William Hazlitt
Image
When one can do better than everyone else in the same walk, one does not make any very painful exertions to outdo oneself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.
William Hazlitt
Image
The best way to make ourselves agreeable to others is by seeming to think them so. If we appear fully sensible of their good qualities they will not complain of the want of them in us.
William Hazlitt
Image
Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.
William Hazlitt
Image
We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically.
William Hazlitt
Image
Those only deserve a monument who do not need one that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.
William Hazlitt
Image
Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.
William Hazlitt
Image
There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things-books, pictures and the face of nature.
William Hazlitt
Image
There is room enough in human life to crowd almost every art and science in it. If we pass no day without a line-visit no place without the company of a book-we may with ease fill libraries or empty them of their contents. The more we do, the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.
William Hazlitt
Image
Women never reason, and therefore they are (comparatively) seldom wrong.
William Hazlitt