William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830) was an English writer remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, often esteemed the greatest English literary critic after Samuel Johnson. Indeed, Hazlitt's writings and remarks on Shakespeare's plays and characters rival only those of Johnson in their depth, insight, originality, and imagination.

Quotes

:*The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

Related Topics:
Liberty - Power

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:*The Tory is one who is governed by sense and habit alone. He considers not what is possible, but what is real; he gives might the preference over right. He cries long life to the conqueror, and is ever strong upon the stronger side ? the side of corruption and prerogative.

Related Topics:
Tory - Conqueror

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::--from Introduction to Political Essays, 1817.

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:*Hazlitt writes about Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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:"I had no notion then that I should ever be able to express my admiration to others in motley imagery or quaint allusion, till the light of his genius shone into my soul, like the sun's rays glittering in the puddles of the road. I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like a worm by the way-side, crushed, bleeding lifeless; but now, bursting from the deadly bands that 'bound them,

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::'With Styx nine times round them,'

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:"my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes, catch the golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained in its original bondage, dark, obscure, with longing infinite and unsatisfied; my heart, shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay, has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that my understanding also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at length found a language to express itself, I owe to Coleridge."

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::--from the essay "My First Acquaintance with Poets"

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