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To Expect An Author To Talk As He Writes Is Ridiculous; Or Even If He Did You Would Find Fault With Him As A Pedant.

-William Hazlitt

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To Expect An Author

William Hazlitt

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To Expect An Author To Talk As He Writes Is Ridiculous; Or Even If He Did You Would Find Fault With Him As A Pedant.

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Men Are In Numberless Instances Qualified For Certain Things, For No Other Reason Than Because They Are Qualified For Nothing Else.

Literature, Like Nobility, Runs In The Blood.

Society Is A More Level Surface Than We Imagine. Wise Men Or Absolute Fools Are Hard To Be Met With, As There Are Few Giants Or Dwarfs. The Heaviest Charge We Can Bring Against The General Texture Of Society Is That It Is Commonplace. Our Fancied Superiority To Others Is In Some One Thing Which We Think Most Of Because We Excel In It, Or Have Paid Most Attention To It; Whilst We Overlook Their Superiority To Us In Something Else Which They Set Equal And Exclusive Store By.

In Some Situations, If You Say Nothing, You Are Called Dull; If You Talk, You Are Thought Impertinent And Arrogant. It Is Hard To Know What To Do In This Case. The Question Seems To Be, Whether Your Vanity Or Your Prudence Predominates.

The Irish Are Hearty, The Scotch Plausible, The French Polite, The Germans Good-natured, The Italians Courtly, The Spaniards Reserved And Decorous - The English Alone Seem To Exist In Taking And Giving Offense.

Nothing Gives Such A Blow To Friendship As The Detecting Another In An Untruth. It Strikes At The Root Of Our Confidence Ever After.

That Which Anyone Has Been Long Learning Unwillingly, He Unlearns With Proportional Eagerness And Haste.

Painting For A Whole Morning Gives One As Excellent An Appetite For One's Dinner, As Old Abraham Tucker Acquired For His By Riding Over Banstead Downs.

We Cannot By A Little Verbal Sophistry Confound The Qualities Of Different Minds, Nor Force Opposite Excellences Into A Union By All The Intolerance In The World. If We Have A Taste For Some One Precise Style Or Manner, We May Keep It To Ourselves And Let Others Have Theirs. If We Are More Catholic In Our Notions, And Want Variety Of Excellence And Beauty, It Is Spread Abroad For Us To Profusion In The Variety Of Books And In The Several Growth Of Men's Minds, Fettered By No Capricious Or Arbitrary Rules.

The Greatest Offence Against Virtue Is To Speak Ill Of It.

It Is The Vice Of Scholars To Suppose That There Is No Knowledge In The World But That Of Books.

A Mighty Stream Of Tendency.

The Objects That We Have Known In Better Days Are The Main Props That Sustain The Weight Of Our Affections, And Give Us Strength To Await Our Future Lot.

Confidence Gives A Fool The Advantage Over A Wise Man.

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.

If The World Were Good For Nothing Else, It Is A Fine Subject For Speculation.

Our Energy Is In Proportion To The Resistance It Meets.

He Who Expects From A Great Name In Politics, In Philosophy, In Art, Equal Greatness In Other Things, Is Little Versed In Human Nature. Our Strength Lies In Our Weakness. The Learned In Books Are Ignorant Of The World. He Who Is Ignorant Of Books Is Often Well Acquainted With Other Things; For Life Is Of The Same Length In The Learned And Unlearned; The Mind Cannot Be Idle; If It Is Not Taken Up With One Thing, It Attends To Another Through Choice Or Necessity; And The Degree Of Previous Capacity In One Class Or Another Is A Mere Lottery.

Anyone Is To Be Pitied Who Has Just Sense Enough To Perceive His Deficiencies.

Perhaps Propriety Is As Near A Word As Any To Denote The Manners Of The Gentleman; Elegance Is Necessary To The Fine Gentleman; Dignity Is Proper To Noblemen; And Majesty To Kings.

There Is A Softness And A Harmony In The Words And In The Thought Unparalleled. Of All Conceits It Is Surely The Most Classical. "i Count Only The Hours That Are Serene.".

If I Have Not Read A Book Before, It Is, For All Intents And Purposes, New To Me Whether It Was Printed Yesterday Or Three Hundred Years Ago.

Life Is The Art Of Being Well Deceived; And In Order That The Deception May Succeed It Must Be Habitual And Uninterrupted.

Persons Without Education Certainly Do Not Want Either Acuteness Or Strength Of Mind In What Concerns Themselves, Or In Things Immediately Within Their Observation; But They Have No Power Of Abstraction, No General Standard Of Taste, Or Scale Of Opinion. They See Their Objects Always Near, And Never In The Horizon. Hence Arises That Egotism Which Has Been Remarked As The Characteristic Of Self-taught Men.

Pride Goes Before A Fall, They Say, And Yet We Often Find, The Folks Who Throw All Pride Away Most Often Fall Behind.

In Love We Do Not Think Of Moral Qualities, And Scarcely Of Intellectual Ones. Temperament And Manner Alone, With Beauty, Excite Love.

The Secret Of The Difficulties Of Those People Who Make A Great Deal Of Money, And Yet Are Always In Want Of It, Is This-they Throw It Away As Soon As They Get It On The First Whim Or Extravagance That Strikes Them, And Have Nothing Left To Meet Ordinary Expenses Or Discharge Old Debts.

Vulgar Prejudices Are Those Which Arise Out Of Accident, Ignorance, Or Authority; Natural Prejudices Are Those Which Arise Out Of The Constitution Of The Human Mind Itself.

The Public Have Neither Shame Or Gratitude.

The Only True Retirement Is That Of The Heart; The Only True Leisure Is The Repose Of The Passions. To Such Persons It Makes Little Difference Whether They Are Young Or Old; And They Die As They Have Lived, With Graceful Resignation.

The Essence Of Poetry Is Will And Passion.

We Do Not Like Our Friends The Worse Because They Sometimes Give Us An Opportunity To Rail At Them Heartily. Their Faults Reconcile Us To Their Virtues.

The Confession Of Our Failings Is A Thankless Office. It Savors Less Of Sincerity Or Modesty Than Of Ostentation. It Seems As If We Thought Our Weaknesses As Good As Other People's Virtues.

The More A Man Writes, The More He Can Write.

The Worst Old Age Is That Of The Mind.

The Most Silent People Are Generally Those Who Think Most Highly Of Themselves.

Tyrants Forego All Respect For Humanity In Proportion As They Are Sunk Beneath It. Taught To Believe Themselves Of A Different Species, They Really Become So, Lose Their Participation With Their Kind, And In Mimicking The God Dwindle Into The Brute.

The Dupe Of Friendship, And The Fool Of Love; Have I Not Reason To Hate And To Despise Myself? Indeed I Do; And Chiefly For Not Having Hated And Despised The World Enough.

Lost Friendship

Persons Of Slender Intellectual Stamina Dread Competition, As Dwarfs Are Afraid Of Being Run Over In The Street.

Dr. Johnson Was A Lazy Learned Man Who Liked To Think And Talk Better Than To Read Or Write; Who, However, Wrote Much And Well, But Too Often By Rote.

To Get Others To Come Into Our Ways Of Thinking, We Must Go Over To Theirs; And It Is Necessary To Follow, In Order To Lead.

Art Is The Microscope Of The Mind, Which Sharpens The Wit As The Other Does The Sight; And Converts Every Object Into A Little Universe In Itself. Art May Be Said To Draw Aside The Veil From Nature. To Those Who Are Perfectly Unskilled In The Practice, Unimbued With The Principles Of Art, Most Objects Present Only A Confused Mass.

No Man Can Thoroughly Master More Than One Art Or Science.

There Is Nothing Good To Be Had In The Country, Or If There Is, They Will Not Let You Have It.

We Judge Of Others For The Most Part By Their Good Opinion Of Themselves; Yet Nothing Gives Such Offense Or Creates So Many Enemies, As That Extreme Self-complacency Or Superciliousness Of Manner, Which Appears To Set The Opinion Of Every One Else At Defiance.

Refinement Creates Beauty Everywhere. It Is The Grossness Of The Spectator That Discovers Anything Like Grossness In The Object.

Beauty Everywhere

The Chain Of Habit Coils Itself Around The Heart Like A Serpent, To Gnaw And Stifle It.

Those Who Speak Ill Of The Spiritual Life, Although They Come And Go By Day, Are Like The Smith's Bellows: They Take Breath But Are Not Alive.

There Is No One Thoroughly Despicable. We Cannot Descend Much Lower Than An Idiot; And An Idiot Has Some Advantages Over A Wise Man.

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.

We Are The Creatures Of Imagination, Passion, And Self-will, More Than Of Reason Or Even Of Self-interest. Even In The Common Transactions And Daily Intercourse Of Life, We Are Governed By Whim, Caprice, Prejudice, Or Accident. The Falling Of A Teacup Puts Us Out Of Temper For The Day; And A Quarrel That Commenced About The Pattern Of A Gown May End Only With Our Lives.

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.

What I Mean By Living To One's Self Is Living In The World, As In It, Not Of It.

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.

They [corporations] Feel Neither Shame, Remorse, Gratitude, Nor Goodwill.

Affectation Is As Necessary To The Mind As Dress Is To The Body.

Books Wind Into The Heart.

A Man In Love Prefers His Passion To Every Other Consideration, And Is Fonder Of His Mistress Than He Is Of Virtue. Should She Prove Vicious, She Makes Vice Lovely In His Eyes.

Political Truth Is Libel; Religious Truth, Blasphemy.

One Truth Discovered Is Immortal, And Entitles Its Author To Be So; For, Like A New Substance In Nature, It Cannot Be Destroyed.

Books Let Us Into Their Souls And Lay Open To Us The Secrets Of Our Own.

He Is A Hypocrite Who Professes What He Does Not Believe; Not He Who Does Not Practice All He Wishes Or Approves.

We Never Do Anything Well Till We Cease To Think About The Manner Of Doing It.

There Is A Secret Pride In Every Human Heart That Revolts At Tyranny. You May Order And Drive An Individual, But You Cannot Make Him Respect You.

A Knave Thinks Himself A Fool, All The Time He Is Not Making A Fool Of Some Other Person.

Envy Is The Deformed And Distorted Offspring Of Egotism; And When We Reflect On The Strange And Disproportioned Character Of The Parent, We Cannot Wonder At The Perversity And Waywardness Of The Child.

Sincerity Has To Do With The Connexion Between Our Words And Thoughts, And Not Between Our Beliefs And Actions.

There Is A Feeling Of Eternity In Youth Which Makes Us Amends For Everything. To Be Young Is To Be As One Of The Immortals.

Do Not Quarrel With The World Too Soon; For, Bad As It May Be, It Is The Best We Have To Live In, Here. If Railing Would Have Made It Better, It Would Have Been Reformed Long Ago.

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

So I Have Loitered My Life Away, Reading Books, Looking At Pictures, Going To Plays, Hearing, Thinking, Writing On What Pleased Me Best. I Have Wanted Only One Thing To Make Me Happy, But Wanting That Have Wanted Everything.

Prejudice Is Never Easy Unless It Can Pass Itself Off For Reason.

You Will Hear More Good Things On The Outside Of A Stagecoach From London To Oxford Than If You Were To Pass A Twelvemonth With The Undergraduates, Or Heads Of Colleges, Of That Famous University.

Pride Erects A Little Kingdom Of Its Own, And Acts As Sovereign In It.

Popularity Disarms Envy In Well-disposed Minds. Those Are Ever The Most Ready To Do Justice To Others Who Feel That The World Has Done Them Justice. When Success Has Not This Effect In Opening The Mind, It Is A Sign That It Has Been Ill Deserved.

One Is Always More Vexed At Losing A Game Of Any Sort By A Single Hole Or Ace, Than If One Has Never Had A Chance Of Winning It.

A Felon Could Plead "benefit Of Clergy" And Be Saved By [reading Aloud] What Was Aptly Enough Termed The "neck Verse", Which Was Very Usually The Miserere Mei Of Psalm 51.

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.

There Is No Flattery So Adroit Or Effectual As That Of Implicit Assent.

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.

Envy Is A Littleness Of Soul, Which Cannot See Beyond A Certain Point, And If It Does Not Occupy The Whole Space Feels Itself Excluded.

The World Loves To Be Amused By Hollow Professions, To Be Deceived By Flattering Appearances, To Live In A State Of Hallucination; And Can Forgive Everything But The Plain, Downright, Simple, Honest Truth.

I Can Enjoy Society In A Room; But Out Of Doors, Nature Is Company Enough For Me

Vice, Like Disease, Floats In The Atmosphere.

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.

Mankind Are A Herd Of Knaves And Fools. It Is Necessary To Join The Crowd, Or Get Out Of Their Way, In Order Not To Be Trampled To Death By Them.

Danger Is A Good Teacher, And Makes Apt Scholars. So Are Disgrace, Defeat, Exposure To Immediate Scorn And Laughter. There Is No Opportunity In Such Cases For Self-delusion, No Idling Time Away, No Being Off Your Guard (or You Must Take The Consequences) - Neither Is There Any Room For Humour Or Caprice Or Prejudice.

Just As Much As We See In Others We Have In Ourselves.

Self Confidence

First Impressions Are Often The Truest, As We Find (not Unfrequently) To Our Cost When We Have Been Wheedled Out Of Them By Plausible Professions Or Actions. A Man's Look Is The Work Of Years, It Is Stamped On His Countenance By The Events Of His Whole Life, Nay, More, By The Hand Of Nature, And It Is Not To Be Got Rid Of Easily.

No Man Is Truly Great Who Is Great Only In His Lifetime. The Test Of Greatness Is The Page Of History.

Life Is The Art Of Being Well Deceived.

The Garb Of Religion Is The Best Cloak For Power.

A Taste For Liberal Art Is Necessary To Complete The Character Of A Gentleman, Science Alone Is Hard And Mechanical. It Exercises The Understanding Upon Things Out Of Ourselves, While It Leaves The Affections Unemployed, Or Engrossed With Our Own Immediate, Narrow Interests.

Life Is A Continued Struggle To Be What We Are Not, And To Do What We Cannot.

We Must Be Doing Something To Be Happy.

Perhaps The Best Cure For The Fear Of Death Is To Reflect That Life Has A Beginning As Well As An End.

The Truly Proud Man Knows Neither Superiors Or Inferiors. The First He Does Not Admit Of - The Last He Does Not Concern Himself About.

To Think Ill Of Mankind And Not Wish Ill To Them, Is Perhaps The Highest Wisdom And Virtue.

Fashion Is The Abortive Issue Of Vain Ostentation And Exclusive Egotism ... Tied To No Rule, And Bound To Conform To Every Whim Of The Minute.

Many A Man Would Have Turned Rogue If He Knew How.

The Only Impeccable Writers Are Those Who Never Wrote.

The Diffusion Of Taste Is Not The Same Thing As The Improvement Of Taste.

The Most Phlegmatic Dispositions Often Contain The Most Inflammable Spirits, As Fire Is Struck From The Hardest Flints.

By Despising All That Has Preceded Us, We Teach Others To Despise Ourselves.

The Youth Is Better Than The Old Age Of Friendship.

Though Familiarity May Not Breed Contempt, It Takes Off The Edge Of Admiration.

A Strong Passion For Any Object Will Ensure Success, For The Desire Of The End Will Point Out The Means.

Some One Is Generally Sure To Be The Sufferer By A Joke.

We Grow Tired Of Ourselves, Much More Of Other People.

I Like A Friend The Better For Having Faults That One Can Talk About.

If We Are Long Absent From Our Friends, We Forget Them; If We Are Constantly With Them, We Despise Them.

Knowledge Is Pleasure As Well As Power.

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.

Every Man, In His Own Opinion, Forms An Exception To The Ordinary Rules Of Morality.

Wit Is The Rarest Quality To Be Met With Among People Of Education, And The Most Common Among The Uneducated.

A Proud Man Is Satisfied With His Own Good Opinion, And Does Not Seek To Make Converts To It.

I Have A Much Greater Ambition To Be The Best Racket Player Than The Best Prose Writer.

In What We Really Understand, We Reason But Little.

Poetry Is The Universal Language Which The Heart Holds With Nature And Itself. He Who Has A Contempt For Poetry, Cannot Have Much Respect For Himself, Or For Anything Else.

One Of The Pleasantest Things In The World Is Going On A Journey; But I Like To Go By Myself.

The Vain Man Makes A Merit Of Misfortune, And Triumphs In His Disgrace.

The Difference Between The Vanity Of A Frenchman And An Englishman Seems To Be This: The One Thinks Everything Right That Is French, The Other Thinks Everything Wrong That Is Not English.

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.

His Hypothesis Goes To This - To Make The Common Run Of His Readers Fancy They Can Do All That Can Be Done By Genius, And To Make The Man Of Genius Believe He Can Only Do What Is To Be Done By Mechanical Rules And Systematic Industry. This Is Not A Very Feasible Scheme; Nor Is Sir Joshua Sufficiently Clear And Explicit In His Reasoning In Support Of It.

He Who Is As Faithful To His Principles As He Is To Himself Is The True Partisan.

One Shining Quality Lends A Lustre To Another, Or Hides Some Glaring Defect.

We Find Many Things To Which The Prohibition Of Them Constitutes The Only Temptation.

A Nickname Is The Hardest Stone That The Devil Can Throw At A Man.

The Ignorance Of The World Leaves One At The Mercy Of Its Malice.

I Like A Person Who Knows His Own Mind And Sticks To It; Who Sees At Once What Is To Be Done In Given Circumstances And Does It. He Does Not Beat About The Bush For Difficulties Or Excuses, But Goes The Shortest And Most Effectual Way To Work To Attain His Own Ends, Or To Accomplish A Useful Object.

A Lively Blockhead In Company Is A Public Benefit. Silence Or Dulness By The Side Of Folly Looks Like Wisdom.

Every Man, In Judging Of Himself, Is His Own Contemporary. He May Feel The Gale Of Popularity, But He Cannot Tell How Long It Will Last. His Opinion Of Himself Wants Distance, Wants Time, Wants Numbers, To Set It Off And Confirm It.

We Do Not Attend To The Advice Of The Sage And Experienced Because We Think They Are Old, Forgetting That They Once Were Young And Placed In The Same Situations As Ourselves.

Those Who Have Had None Of The Cares Of This Life To Harass And Disturb Them, Have Been Obliged To Have Recourse To The Hopes And Fears Of The Next To Vary The Prospect Before Them.

You Know More Of A Road By Having Traveled It Than By All The Conjectures And Descriptions In The World.

Man Is A Make-believe Animal: He Is Never So Truly Himself As When He Is Acting A Part.

Grace Is The Absence Of Everything That Indicates Pain Or Difficulty, Hesitation Or Incongruity.

A Man's Reputation Is Not In His Own Keeping, But Lies At The Mercy Of The Profligacy Of Others. Calumny Requires No Proof.

Habit Is Necessary To Give Power.

Elegance Is Something More Than Ease; It Is More Than A Freedom From Awkwardness Or Restraint. It Implies, I Conceive, A Precision, A Polish, A Sparkling, Spirited Yet Delicate.

Time,--the Most Independent Of All Things.

Corporate Bodies Are More Corrupt And Profligate Than Individuals, Because They Have More Power To Do Mischief, And Are Less Amenable To Disgrace Or Punishment. They Feel Neither Shame, Remorse, Gratitude, Nor Goodwill.

I Am Not, In The Ordinary Acceptation Of The Term, A Good-natured Man; That Is, Many Things Annoy Me Besides What Interferes With My Own Ease And Interest. I Hate A Lie; A Piece Of Injustice Wounds Me To The Quick, Though Nothing But The Report Of It Reach Me. Therefore I Have Made Many Enemies And Few Friends; For The Public Know Nothing Of Well-wishers, And Keep A Wary Eye On Those Who Would Reform Them.

Vice Is Man's Nature: Virtue Is A Habit--or A Mask.

To Be Wiser Than Other Men Is To Be Honester Than They; And Strength Of Mind Is Only Courage To See And Speak The Truth.

The Safest Kind Of Praise Is To Foretell That Another Will Become Great In Some Particular Way. It Has The Greatest Show Of Magnanimity And The Least Of It In Reality.

There Is An Unseemly Exposure Of The Mind, As Well As Of The Body.

Learning Is Its Own Exceeding Great Reward; And At The Period Of Which We Speak, It Bore Other Fruits, Not Unworthy Of It.

Society Is A More Level Surface Than We Imagine. Wise Men Or Absolute Fools Are Hard To Be Met With, As There Are Few Giants Or Dwarfs.

The Art Of Life Is To Know How To Enjoy A Little And To Endure Very Much.

A Thought Must Tell At Once, Or Not At All.

Those Who Are At War With Others Are Not At Peace With Themselves.

We All Wear Some Disguise, Make Some Professions, Use Some Artifice, To Set Ourselves Off As Being Better Than We Are; And Yet It Is Not Denied That We Have Some Good Intentions And Praiseworthy Qualities At Bottom.

Good Intentions

Greatness Is Great Power, Producing Great Effects. It Is Not Enough That A Man Has Great Power In Himself, He Must Shew It To All The World In A Way That Cannot Be Hid Or Gainsaid.

We Prefer Ourselves To Others, Only Because We A Have More Intimate Consciousness And Confirmed Opinion Of Our Own Claims And Merits Than Of Any Other Person's.

We Are Governed By Sympathy; And The Extent Of Our Sympathy Is Determined By That Of Our Sensibility

Mankind Are So Ready To Bestow Their Admiration On The Dead, Because The Latter Do Not Hear It, Or Because It Gives No Pleasure To The Objects Of It. Even Fame Is The Offspring Of Envy.

Like A Rustic At A Fair, We Are Full Of Amazement And Rapture, And Have No Thought Of Going Home, Or That It Will Soon Be Night.

I Am Always Afraid Of A Fool. One Cannot Be Sure That He Is Not A Knave As Well.

When We Forget Old Friends, It Is A Sign We Have Forgotten Ourselves.

We Are Not Satisfied To Be Right, Unless We Can Prove Others To Be Quite Wrong.

It [will-making] Is The Latest Opportunity We Have Of Exercising The Natural Perversity Of The Disposition. This Last Act Of Our Lives Seldom Belies The Former Tenor Of Them For Stupidity, Caprice, And Unmeaning Spite. All That We Seem To Think Of Is To Manage Matters So (in Settling Accounts With Those Who Are So Unmannerly As To Survive Us) As To Do As Little Good, And To Plague And Disappoint As Many People, As Possible.

Tears May Be Considered As The Natural And Involuntary Resource Of The Mind Overcome By Some Sudden And Violent Emotion, Before Ithas Had Time To Reconcile Its Feelings To The Change In Circumstances: While Laughter May Be Defined To Be The Same Sort Of Convulsive And Involuntary Movement, Occasioned By Mere Sur Prise Or Contrast (in The Absence Of Any More Serious Emotion), Before It Has Time To Reconcile Its Belief To Contradictory Appearances.

The Most Learned Are Often The Most Narrow Minded.

Open Mindedness

I Do Not Think That What Is Called Love At First Sight Is So Great An Absurdity As It Is Sometimes Imagined To Be. We Generally Make Up Our Minds Beforehand To The Sort Of Person We Should Like, Grave Or Gay, Black, Brown, Or Fair; With Golden Tresses Or Raven Locks; - And When We Meet With A Complete Example Of The Qualities We Admire, The Bargain Is Soon Struck.

Envy Is Littleness Of Soul.

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.

To The Proud The Slightest Repulse Or Disappointment Is The Last Indignity.

Wit Is The Salt Of Conversation, Not The Food.

The Definition Of Genius Is That It Acts Unconsciously, And Those Who Have Produced Immortal Works Have Done So Without Knowing How Or Why.

If We Wish To Know The Force Of Human Genius, We Should Read Shakespeare. If We Wish To See The Insignificance Of Human Learning, We May Study His Commentators.

Satirists Gain The Applause Of Others Through Fear, Not Through Love.

Rules And Models Destroy Genius And Art.

Hope Is The Best Possession. None Are Completely Wretched But Those Who Are Without Hope. Few Are Reduced So Low As That.

Hoping For The Best

If A Person Has No Delicacy, He Has You In His Power.

Principle Is A Passion For Truth.

The Incentive To Ambition Is The Love Of Power.

Almost Every Sect Of Christianity Is A Perversion Of Its Essence, To Accommodate It To The Prejudices Of The World.

Without The Aid Of Prejudice And Custom, I Should Not Be Able To Find My Way Across The Room.

Keep Your Misfortunes To Yourself.

A Nickname Is The Heaviest Stone That The Devil Can Throw At A Man. It Is A Bugbear To The Imagination, And, Though We Do Not Believe In It, It Still Haunts Our Apprehensions.

Those Who Wish To Forget Painful Thoughts Do Well To Absent Themselves For A While From, The Ties And Objects That Recall Them; But We Can Be Said Only To Fulfill Our Destiny In The Place That Gave Us Birth.

A Life Of Action And Danger Moderates The Dread Of Death. It Not Only Gives Us Fortitude To Bear Pain, But Teaches Us At Every Step The Precarious Tenure On Which We Hold Our Present Being.

We Talk Little When We Do Not Talk About Ourselves.

Anyone Who Has Passed Though The Regular Gradations Of A Classical Education, And Is Not Made A Fool By It, May Consider Himself As Having Had A Very Narrow Escape.

There Are Many Who Talk On From Ignorance Rather Than From Knowledge, And Who Find The Former An Inexhaustible Fund Of Conversation.

A Thing Is Not Vulgar Merely Because It Is Common.

To Think Justly, We Must Understand What Others Mean. To Know The Value Of Our Thoughts, We Must Try Their Effect On Other Minds.

A Man Who Does Not Endeavour To Seem More Than He Is Will Generally Be Thought Nothing Of. We Habitually Make Such Large Deductions For Pretence And Imposture That No Real Merit Will Stand Against Them. It Is Necessary To Set Off Our Good Qualities With A Certain Air Of Plausibility And Self-importance, As Some Attention To Fashion Is Necessary.

We Do Not See Nature With Our Eyes, But With Our Understandings And Our Hearts.

You Are Never Tired Of Painting, Because You Have To Set Down Not What You Know Already, But What You Have Just Discovered.

Despair Swallows Up Cowardice.

Grace Has Been Defined As The Outward Expression Of The Inward Harmony Of The Soul.

To Impress The Idea Of Power On Others, They Must Be Made In Some Way To Feel It.

We Had Rather Do Anything Than Acknowledge The Merit Of Another If We Can Help It. We Cannot Bear A Superior Or An Equal. Hence Ridicule Is Sure To Prevail Over Truth, For The Malice Of Mankind, Thrown Into The Scale, Gives The Casting Weight.

Those Who Have The Largest Hearts Have The Soundest Understandings; And They Are The Truest Philosophers Who Can Forget Themselves.

Some People Break Promises For The Pleasure Of Breaking Them.

Keeping Promises

Friendship Is Cemented By Interest, Vanity, Or The Want Of Amusement; It Seldom Implies Esteem, Or Even Mutual Regard.

The Mind Revolts Against Certain Opinions, As The Stomach Rejects Certain Foods.

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