Frases de William Hazlitt

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“La peor vejez es la del espíritu.”

“Un apodo es la piedra más dura que el diablo puede arrojar a una persona”

“Aquellos incapaces autores son los que nunca escribieron.”

“El amor a la libertad es amor al prójimo; el amor al poder es amor a sí mismo.”

“El silencio es una de las artes más grandes de la conversación.”

“Los hombres despiertos no tienen más que un mundo, pero los hombres dormidos tienen cada uno su mundo propio.”

“La naturaleza parece (cuanto más la observamos) hecha de aversiones: sin nada que odiar, perderíamos el auténtico resorte del pensamiento y de la acción. La vida se convertiría en una charca de agua estancada si no la agitaran los intereses opuestos y la pasiones irrefrenables de los hombres. La línea blanca de nuestro destino resplandece (o por lo menos se hace visible) cuando se oscurece al máximo su entorno, de la misma manera en que el arco iris pinta su propia forma sobre una nube. ¿Es orgullo? ¿Es envidia? ¿Es la fuerza del contraste? ¿Es debilidad o malicia? Lo cierto es que en la mente humana existe una atracción secreta, un ansia de maldad que encuentra un deleite perverso, y a la vez gozoso, en la fechoría, pues es una fuente inagotable de satisfacciones. La bondad absoluta no tarda en volverse insípida, carente de variedad y brío. El sufrimiento es agridulce, y no sacia nunca. El amor se convierte, con un poco de indulgencia, en indiferencia o en hastío: Únicamente el odio es inmortal.”

“Las personas hábiles son los instrumentos con que trabajan los viles.”

“Me gustaría emplear toda mi vida en viajar, si alguien pudiera prestarme después otra vida para pasármela en casa.”

“Todos somos, en mayor o menor medida, esclavos de la opinión pública.”

“Todo aquello que se encuentra fuera del alcance del sentido y del conocimiento, todo aquello que se percibe defectuosamente, la imaginación lo recompone a su antojo; y todo menos el momento presente, menos el lugar presente, la pasión lo reclama para sí, lo incuba con las alas extendidas y le imprime su propia imagen. La pasión es dueña del espacio infinito y los objetos distantes nos gustan porque limitan con sus confines y se moldean con su contacto.”

“El amor y la felicidad son almas gemelas, o nacen una de otra.”

“La agudeza es la sal de la conversación, no la carne.”

“La gente más callada es, de ordinario, la que mejor piensa en sí misma.”

“La moda comienza y termina siempre por las dos cosas que más aborrece: la singularidad y la vulgaridad.”

“La prosperidad es un gran maestro; la adversidad es mucho más grande. La posesión embota la mente, la adversidad la fortalece.”

“Las antipatías violentas son siempre sospechosas y revelan una secreta afinidad.”

“Nunca empleamos más acertadamente nuestros vicios que en combatir a los unos y a los otros.”

“Un buen carácter vale tanto como un buen patrimonio.”

“Una cosa no es vulgar por el hecho de ser corriente.”

“The art of will-making chiefly consists in baffling the importunity of expectation.”

“Those who can command themselves, command others.”

“The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.”

“General principles are not the less true or important because, from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it, or like that secret influence which binds the world together and holds the planets in their orbits.”

“Some persons make promises for the pleasure of breaking them.”

“This Journal, then, is a depository for every species of political sophistry and personal calumny. There is no abuse or corruption that does not there find a jesuitical palliation or a bare-faced vindication. There we meet the slime of hypocrisy, the varnish of courts, the cant of pedantry, the cobwebs of the law, the iron hand of power. Its object is as mischievous as the means by which it is pursued are odious.”

“If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.”

“There are names written in her immortal scroll, at which FAME blushes!”

“We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.”

“Grace is the absence of every thing that indicates pain or difficulty, or hesitation or incongruity.”

“The love of fame, as it enters at times into his mind, is only another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority — that of time.”

“The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.”

“Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety.”

“The thing is plain. All that men really understand is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know and motives to study or practise. The rest is affectation and imposture.”

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

“Horus non numero nisi serenas—"I count only the hours that are serene"—is the motto of a sundial near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled.”

“Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own, and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image of itself. Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant objects please because they border on its confines and are moulded by its touch.”

“Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.”

“To a superior race of beings the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem equally ridiculous.”

“The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.”

“They are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream; a studied madness.”

“The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.”

“Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.”

“The public have neither shame or gratitude.”

“We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into a union by all the intolerance in the world. … If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary rules.”

“Good temper is an estate for life…”

“If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.”

“It is strange that people should take so much interest at one time in what they so soon forget; — the truth is, they feel no interest in it [news of the day] at any time, but it does for something to talk about. Their ideas are served up to them, like their bill of fare, for the day; and the whole creation, history, war, politics, morals, poetry, metaphysics, is to them like a file of antedated newspapers, of no use, not even for reference, except the one which lies on the table! You cannot take any of these persons at a greater disadvantage than before they are provided with their cue for the day. They ask with a face of dreary vacuity, 'Have you anything new?”

“Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern — why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?”