William Hazlitt - Collected Quotes

"We do not see nature with our eyes, but without understandings and our hearts." (William Hazlitt, "Thoughts on Taste", 1818)

"Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape." (William Hazlitt, "Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners", 1821-1822)

"Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge." (William Hazlitt, "Table Talk; or, Original Essays", 1821-1822)

"This is the test and triumph of originality, not to show us what has never been, and what we may therefore very easily never have dreamt of, but to point out to us what is before our eyes and under our feet, though we have had no suspicion of its existence, for want of sufficient strength of intuition, of determined grasp of mind to seize and retain it." (William Hazlitt, "Table Talk; or, Original Essays", 1821-1822)

"Learning is its own exceeding great reward; and at the period of which we speak, it bore other fruits, not unworthy of it." (William Hazlitt, "The Plain Speaker", 1826)

"The origin of all science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance." (William Hazlitt, "Burke and the Edinburgh Phrenologists", The Atlas 15, 1829)

"The most important and lasting truths are the most obvious ones. Nature cheats us with her mysteries, one after another, like a juggler with his tricks; but shews us her plain honest face, without our paying for it." (William Hazlitt, "Characteristics: In the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims", 1837)

"Rules and models destroy genius and art." (William Hazlitt, "Sketches and Essays", 1839)