William Hazlitt Men Quotations

There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.

No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.

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.

The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.

An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.

The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors. The first he does not admit of - the last he does not concern himself about.

The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.

Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.

Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.

Grace in women has more effect than beauty.

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.

No young man ever thinks he shall die.

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel

Women have often more of what is called good sense then men. They have fewer pretensions; are less implicated in theories; and judge of objects more from their immediate and involuntary impression on the mind, and, therefore, more truly and naturally.

The world judge of men by their ability in their professions, and we judge of ourselves by the same test; for it is on that on which our success in life depends

The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.

Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both.

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.

One said a tooth drawer was a kind of unconscionable trade, because his trade was nothing else but to take away those things whereby every man gets his living.

It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, anymore than they grow stronger or healthier or honest.

First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not infrequently) to our cost, when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or studied 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.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit -- or a mask. . . . The foregoing maxim shows the difference between truth and sarcasm.

We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.

The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way ... an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.

Man is an intellectual animal, and therefore an everlasting contradiction to himself. His senses centre in himself, his ideas reach to the ends of the universe; so that he is torn in pieces between the two, without a possibility of its ever being otherwise.

A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.

An honest man is respected by all parties.

There is evil poured upon the earth from the overflowings of corruption-- Sickness, and poverty, and pain, and guilt, and madness, and sorrow; But, as the water from a fountain riseth and sinketh to its level, Ceaselessly toileth justice to equalize the lots of men.

That humanity and sincerity which dispose men to resist injustice and tyranny render them unfit to cope with the cunning and power of those who are opposed to them. The friends of liberty trust to the professions of others because they are themselves sincere, and endeavour to secure the public good with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who have no regard to anything but their own unprincipled ends, and stick at nothing to accomplish them.

Reflection makes men cowards.

Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man.

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.

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.

Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may, he will only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.

The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.

A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.

A King (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.

A really great man has always an idea of something greater than himself.

The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.

The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men.

No man can thoroughly master more than one art or science.

A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn.

There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.

A full-dressed ecclesiastic is a sort of go-cart of divinity; an ethical automaton. A clerical prig is, in general, a very dangerous as well as contemptible character. The utmost that those who thus habitually confound their opinions and sentiments with the outside coverings of their bodies can aspire to, is a negative and neutral character, like wax-work figures, where the dress is done as much to the life as the man, and where both are respectable pieces of pasteboard, or harmless compositions of fleecy hosiery.

Man is a poetical animal, and delights in fiction.

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.

There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary.

A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof.

Men of gravity are intellectual stammerers, whose thoughts move slowly.

A man is a hypocrite only when he affects to take a delight in what he does not feel, not because he takes a perverse delight in opposite things.

When you find out a man's ruling passion, beware of crossing him in it.

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

The vain man makes a merit of misfortune, and triumphs in his disgrace.

Charity, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Next to putting it in a bank, men like to squander their superfluous wealth on those to whom it is sure to be doing the least possible good.

The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.

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.

Truth from the mouth of an honest man and severity from a good-natured man have a double effect.

Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it.

It might be argued, that to be a knave is the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary to be a learned man.

The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame.

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.

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.

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.

Many a man would have turned rogue if he knew how.

Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps.

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.

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.

No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.

A man who is determined never to move out of the beaten road cannot lose his way.

Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.

The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.

Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him.

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer - that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.

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.

Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization.

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.

No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.

The more a man writes, the more he can write.

A nickname is the hardest stone that the devil can throw at a man.

No really great man ever thought himself so.

The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.