William Hazlitt Quotes

Acting is about communicating what it is like to be human: the pain, the laughs, the misery, the joy. I suppose I am searching to have it all.

I'm somebody who believes in funny things, and laughing, but I do like for them to come from a place that addresses the human condition.

He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.

Again, as a gay man I look at that and say there's a hopelessness that surrounds it, but as a human being I look at it and say 'Why? Where's this disparity coming from, and why can't we as a culture and society dig deeper to examine that?' We're terrified of facing ourselves.

If we were to lose the ability to be emotional, if we were to lose the ability to be angry, to be outraged, we would be robots. And I refuse that.

If we can't laugh at ourselves and the human condition, we're going to be mean.

I always do drama. It's just that some people laugh at it and some people cry.

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

I remember certain people in the audience laughing and I wanted to ask: 'What are you laughing at? This isn't funny.' Now I realize that laughter can come from insecurity. They don't know how they should be feeling.

Well, we ought to be stirred, even to tears, by society's ills.

It's always fun to make people laugh, and then make them afraid or cry at the same time.

Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason

Intelligence is the ability to solve problems, whereas consciousness is the ability to feel things such as pain, joy, love, and anger. Throughout history, intelligence always went hand in hand with consciousness.

The lead character in 'Adaptation' is pretty much me but with more talent. Every time I watch 'Adaptation,' I feel very emotional because it makes me be kinder to myself and see the human situation a little more clearly.

Though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve.

I'm convinced that I'm a child of God. That's wonderful, exhilarating, liberating, full of promise. But the burden which goes along with that is, I'm convinced that everybody is a child of God. . . . I weep a lot. I thank God I laugh a lot, too. The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.

We are the only creatures that both laugh and weep. I think it's because we are the only creatures that see the difference between the way things are and the way they might be.

How odd it is that we so often weep for each other's distresses, when we shed not a tear for our own!

I have searched all night and day for new and better words that could express my feelings and fear for the people of this country. I found no new words. I only have no hope-filled insight to deliver. I only have this warning to all Americans: Whatever this country is willing to do to the least of us, it will one day do to us all.

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else, but when it happens to you, why it seems to lose some of its Humor, and if it keeps on happening, why the entire laughter kinder Fades out of it.

I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. This I believe to be a fact: and I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact.

My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.

Remember, frustration is out of expectation, and ego is always expecting. The ego is a beggar.

The greatest pleasure is not - say - sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity - well, that's the job of the writer.

Our tragedy is that we forget it might be someone else first.