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. . .
More Quotes from William Hazlitt:
The accomplishments of the body are obvious and clear to all those of the mind are recondite and doubtful, and therefore grudgingly acknowledged, or held up as the sport of prejudice, spite, and folly.William Hazlitt
If from the top of a long cold barren hill I hear the distant whistle of a thrush which seems to come up from some warm woody shelter beyond the edge of the hill, this sound coming faint over the rocks with a mingled feeling of strangeness and joy, the idea of the place about me, and the imaginary one beyond will all be combined together in such a manner in my mind as to become inseparable.
William Hazlitt
Give me the clear blue sky above my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner - and then to thinking It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths.
William Hazlitt
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.
William Hazlitt
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.
William Hazlitt
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.
William Hazlitt
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Based on Topics: Books Quotes, Education Quotes, Learning Quotes, Nature Quotes, Wisdom & Knowledge QuotesBased on Keywords: blinds, foil
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