William Hazlitt, two essays

[fiefoe]

Hazlitt wrote in the days when the telegraph was a new invention, and paragraphs are in scarce supply. The second piece must have been written with a bursting spleen and clenched teeth.

"On Going A Journey"

• 'a friend in my retreat / Whom I may whisper, solitude is sweet.' [William Cowper]
• If you only hint what you feel in a kind of dumb show, it is insipid; if you have to explain it, it is making a toil of a pleasure.
• I want to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy.
  
• A stranger takes his hue and character from the time and place; he is a part of the furniture and costume of an inn.
• Things near us are seen at the size of life; things at a distance are diminished to the size of the understanding.
  
• The time we have spent (abroad)... appears to be cut out of our substantial, downright existence, and never to join kindly on to it.
  
• - to hold to the universe only by a dish of sweet-breads
  

"On The Pleasure Of Hating"

• The spirit of malevolence survives the practical exertion of it.
  
• Every one has his full swing, or goes to the Devil his own way.
• It is not the quality so much as the quantity of excitement that we are anxious about.
  
• The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to rankling spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness, and a narrow, jealous, inquisitorial watchfulness over the actions and motives of others.
  
• For my own part, as I once said, I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.
  
• It is because pleasure asks a greater effort of the mind to support it than pain; and we turn after a little idle dalliance from what we love to what we hate!
• I see folly join with knavery, and together make up public spirit and public opinions.
  
• Have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.