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To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Character
Purposes
Nothing
Display
Great
Powers
Greatness
Unless
Greatest
Purpose
Makes
Applied

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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It is only necessary to raise a bugbear before the English imagination in order to govern it at will. Whatever they hate or fear, they implicitly believe in, merely from the scope it gives to these passions.
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A really great man has always an idea of something greater than himself.
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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.
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Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere.
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True friendship is self-love at second hand where, as in a flattering mirror we may see our virtues magnified and our errors softened, and where we may fancy our opinion of ourselves confirmed by an impartial and faithful witness.
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Prejudice is never easy unless it can pass itself off for reason.
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Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.
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The number of objects we see from living in a large city amuses the mind like a perpetual raree-show, without supplying it with any ideas.
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Men of the greatest genius are not always the most prodigal of their encomiums. But then it is when their range of power is confined, and they have in fact little perception, except of their own particular kind of excellence.
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Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.
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I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it.
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Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly.
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The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.
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Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to our efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap.
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The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it.
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Abuse is an indirect species of homage.
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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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Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.
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A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.
William Hazlitt
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Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.
William Hazlitt