Quote
"It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else."
T
Table-TalkHe changes his opinions as he does his friends, and much on the same a — Table-Talk
"He changes his opinions as he does his friends, and much on the same account. He has no comfort in fixed principles; as soon as anything is settled in his own mind, he quarrels with it. He has no satisfaction but the chase after truth, runs a question down, worries and kills it, then quits it like a vermin, and starts some new game, to lead him a new dance, and give him a fresh breathing through bog and brake, with the rabble yelping at his heels and the leaders perpetually at fault."
T
Table-Talk
Table-Talk
author47 quotes
Table-Talk is a collection of essays by the English cultural critic and social commentator William Hazlitt. It was originally published as two volumes, the first of which appeared in April 1821. The essays deal with topics such as art, literature and philosophy. Duncan Wu has described the essays as the "pinnacle of [Hazlitt's] achievement", and argues that Table-Talk and The Plain Speaker (1826)
More by Table-Talk
View all →Quote
"Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts."
T
Table-TalkQuote
"Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge."
T
Table-TalkQuote
"Scholars, like princes, may learn something by being incognito. Yet we see those who cannot go into a booksellers shop, or bear to be five minutes in a stage-coach, without letting you know who they are. They carry their reputation about with them as the snail does its shell, and sit under its canopy, like the lady in the lobster. I cannot understand this at all. What is the use of a mans always revolving round his own little circle? He must, one should think, be tired of it himself, as well as tire other people."
T
Table-TalkQuote
"Any one who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape."
T
Table-TalkQuote
"First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or actions. A mans look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily."
T
Table-Talk