William Hazlitt Quotes

A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.

There's no such thing as old age. I'm no different now than I was 50 years ago. I'm just having more fun.

An objective truth and individual reason are feared above all.

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.

People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better, and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore, and people need to get used to that.

Since 1890, the Tour d'Argent's basic recipe hasn't changed. If you find yourself at the restaurant tomorrow, you will eat duck in the confidence that it was what someone ate a hundred years ago. You will eat it in the expectation that someone else will be served it a hundred years from now.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern.

What is it one yearns for? It is to be able to do a thing for the first time again. And that is impossible.

An outsider can see some things much better.

An outsider's point of view is always handy.

The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.

We took Beowulf, the epic poem in Old English, and put it right together with John Gardner's contemporary retelling. If you bring it into today, we really feel that it has something very fresh to say now.

A fresh pair of eyes can often find problems.

I deliberately never read about films before I see them.

Shakespeare and his work will always be relevant. He wrote those pieces hundreds of years ago and we haven't really changed as humans, have we? We have to deal with love, honour and adultery now - people were the same then, too - that's what's so wonderful and powerful.

I am not interested in shooting new things - I am interested to see things new.

I think objectivity is like this strange myth that people think you're supposed to achieve, but actually, the dirty little secret is that it's not attainable any more than pure justice is attainable by the courts.

I don't worry whether the period is contemporary or three hundred years ago. Human beings are all alike.

The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means.

The first time I read something, I have this special feeling of being fully engaged with it. It's fresh to the audience because it's fresh to me. It's a little mystical, but I really believe that.

The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.

The validity of doctrine does not depend on whose ox it gores.

What's funny is funny. The same thing that made you laugh a hundred years ago makes you laugh now.

I think I just say what I'm thinking. And - you know, if people relate to it, they relate to it, but - I really - you know, if you really listen to me, I don't have my finger on any pulse.