William Hazlitt Quotes on Man (29 Quotes)


    Man is an individual animal with narrow faculties, but infinite desires, which he is anxious to concentrate in some one object within the grasp of his imagination, and where, if he cannot be all that he wishes himself, he may at least contemplate his own pride, vanity, and passions, displayed in their most extravagant dimensions in a being no bigger and no better than himself.

    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.

    We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves, and have neither thoughts nor feelings to impart to them. Give a man a topic in his head, a throb of pleasure in his heart, and he will be glad to share it with the first person he meets.

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

    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.


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

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

    When a man is dead, they put money in his coffin, erect monuments to his memory, and celebrate the anniversary of his birthday in set speeches. Would they take any notice of him if he were living No.

    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.

    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.

    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.

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

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


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

    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.

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

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

    Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

    Learning is the knowledge of that which is not generally known to others, and which we can only derive at second-hand from books or other artificial sources. The knowledge of that which is before us, or about us, which appeals to our experience, passions, and pursuits, to the bosom and businesses of men, is not learning. Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know.

    He is a man of capacity who possesses considerable intellectual riches while he is a man of genius who finds out a vein of new ore. Originality is the seeing nature differently from others, and yet as it is in itself. It is not singularity or affectation, but the discovery of new and valuable truth. All the world do not see the whole meaning of any object they have been looking at. Habit blinds them to some things shortsightedness to others. Every mind is not a gauge and measure of truth. Nature has her surface and her dark recesses. She is deep, obscure, and infinite. It is only minds on whom she makes her fullest impressions that can penetrate her shrine or unveil her Holy of Holies. It is only those whom she has filled with her spirit that have the boldness or the power to reveal her mysteries to others.

    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 whiffling, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

    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.

    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. . .

    It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

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

    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.

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

    Death cancels everything but truth and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization. It makes the meanest of us sacred --it installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies.


    More William Hazlitt Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Man - Life - Mind - World - Friendship - Love - Truth - Education - Power - People - Genius - Wisdom & Knowledge - Opinions - Nature - Vice & Virtue - Imagination & Visualization - Sense & Perception - Passion - Art - View All William Hazlitt Quotations

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