William Hazlitt Quotes

Slander strongly and some will stick.

You work hard, you sacrifice for everything you do, and in one second, someone can tarnish your name - someone can bad-mouth you, and someone can say things. People let all of the good things gets washed away because someone spoke ill of them.

A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof.

CALUMNUS, n. A graduate of the School for Scandal.

It's very painful to have something that's not true written about you.

I have much to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it.

Slander is worse than cannibalism.

It is harder to kill a whisper than even a shouted calumny.

People have already dirtied my name too much.

Infamous Greek calumnies

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.

Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick. Audacter calumniare, semper aliquid haeret

Malice delights to blacken the characters of prominent men.

Should they whisper false of you, Never trouble to deny; Should the words they say be true, Weep and storm and say they lie.

For enemies carry about slander not in the form in which it took its rise . The scandal of men is everlasting; even then does it survive when you would suppose it to be dead.

The slanders poured down like Niagara. If you take into consideration the setting - the war and the revolution - and the character of the accused - revolutionary leaders of millions who were conducting their party to the sovereign power - you can say without exaggeration that July 1917 was the month of the most gigantic slander in world history.

On Rumor's tongue continual slanders ride.

Character assassination is at once easier and surer than physical assault; and it involves far less risk for the assassin. It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero in the country of his victims.

He that easily believes rumors has the principle within him to augment rumors. It is strange to see the ravenous appetite with which some devourers of character and happiness fix upon the sides of the innocent and unfortunate.

Slander lives upon succession, For ever housed where it gets possession.

He who fights with priests may make up his mind to have his poor good name torn and befouled by the most infamous lies and the most cutting slanders.

Whatever defamation of character my enemies are spreading about me, I do not feel the need to justify myself toward them. While discretion obliges me to remain silent, my duty compels me to prevent them from doing any more harm.

Into the space of one little hour sins enough may be conjured up by evil tongues to blast the fame of a whole life of virtue.

Quick-circulating slanders mirth afford; and reputation bleeds in every word.

Yet my humble capacity has not preserved me from calumnies.