William Hazlitt Quotes on Nature (10 Quotes)

Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes. . .

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.

There are only 3 pleasures in life pure and lasting, and they all are derived from inanimate things books, pictures, and the face of nature.

His works (taken together) are almost like a new edition of human nature.

The fields his study, nature was his book.

Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly.

The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.

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.

The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.

There are persons who cannot make friends. Who are they Those who cannot be friends. It is not the want of understanding or good nature, of entertaining or useful qualities, that you complain of on the contrary, they have probably many points of attraction but they have one that neutralizes all these --they care nothing about you, and are neither the better nor worse for what you think of them. They manifest no joy at your approach and when you leave them, it is with a feeling that they can do just as well without you. This is not sullenness, nor indifference, nor absence of mind but they are intent solely on their own thoughts, and you are merely one of the subjects they exercise them upon. They live in society as in a solitude.