William Hazlitt Quotations | Page 5

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.

I am proud up to the point of equality; everything above or below that appears to me arrant impertinence or abject meanness.

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.

Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.

Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.

Wonder at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.

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

A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.

We trifle with, make sport of, and despise those who are attached to us, and follow those that fly from us.