William Hazlitt Quotes

Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs. The heaviest charge we can bring against the general texture of society is that it is commonplace. Our fancied superiority to others is in some one thing which we think most of because we excel in it, or have paid most attention to it; whilst we overlook their superiority to us in something else which they set equal and exclusive store by.

Remember, half the people you know are below average.

Democracy presumes that we're all created equal; competition proves we are not, or else every race would end in a tie.

Anyone could be in the orchestra, or sports team, or arts club at my school. It was precisely the kind of inclusivity that now meets with a sort of scorn and derision as a prizes-for-all culture that generates only mediocrity. There's something so insulting about the idea that including lots of people means mediocrity.

No nation has reason to regard itself superior to others by virtue of its innate endowment.

Some people prefer a world where we're all equally talented in everything. Whether you prefer that world or not, I don't think that world exists.

If a man's got talent and guts to buck society, he's obviously above average. You want to hold on to him. You straighten him out and turn him into a plus value. Why throw him away? Do that enough and all you've got left are the sheep.

Some are nice and some aren't. Some are smart, and others are about as bright as a wet match in a dark cave. In other words, pretty normal.

The adjuration to be "normal" seems shockingly repellent to me; I see neither hope nor comfort in sinking to that low level. I think it is ignorance that makes people think of abnormality only with horror and allows them to remain undismayed at the proximity of "normal" to average and mediocre. For surely anyone who achieves anything is, essentially, abnormal.

Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and the mediocre.

There is no character in the comedy of human life more difficult to play well than that of an old bachelor.

A wise man among the ignorant is as a beautiful girl in the company of blind men.

One can hardly tell women that washing up saucepans is their divine mission, [so] they are told that bringing up children is their divine mission. But the way things are in the world, bringing up children has a great deal in common with washing up saucepans.

Wise men say, only fools rush in. Wise men are so slow.

Normality is the Great Neurosis of civilization.

The fear of being an old maid made young girls rush into matrimony with a recklessness that astonishes.

The thing that's fascinating about portraiture is that nobody is alike.

This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A's, but I knew that's what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard's mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself.

How wise are they that are but fools in love!

It's a man's world, they say; but in its daily textures it is a world created by and for women.

Hannibal Lecter: We live in a primitive time - don't we, Will? - neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.

The publicis rather apt to be unreasonably discontented when a woman does marry again, than when she does not.

Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man.

For too long, we've assumed that there is a single template for human nature, which is why we diagnose most deviations as disorders. But the reality is that there are many different kinds of minds. And that's a very good thing.