Quote

It is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying on itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Misfortunes
Indifferent
Desires
Preying
Struggle
Disgusted
Passion
Hopelessness
Desire
Misfortune
Mind
Things
Struggling

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.
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Lying is the strongest acknowledgement of the force of truth.
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Genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength.
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Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense a substitute for true knowledge.
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The more we do, the more we can do the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.
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He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan.
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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
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Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.
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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.
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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.
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Rules and models destroy genius and art.
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The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desires of the soul, and of which it never tires.
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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.
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There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things-books, pictures and the face of nature.
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Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.
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The look of a gentleman is little else than the reflection of the looks of the world.
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A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common.
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The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.
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The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.
William Hazlitt
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The love of liberty is the love of others the love of power is the love of ourselves.
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