William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830) was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as an art critic, drama critic, social commentator, and philosopher. He was also a painter. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is currently little read and mostly out of print. During his lifetime he befriended many people who are now part of the 19th-century literary canon, including Charles and Mary Lamb, Stendhal, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth.
Read more about William Hazlitt: Posthumous Reputation
Famous quotes containing the words william and/or hazlitt:
“The neo-hippie-dips, the sentimentality-crazed iguana anthropomorphizers, the Chicken Littles, the three-bong-hit William Blakes—thank God these people don’t actually go outdoors much, or the environment would be even worse than it is already.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be.... What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them.... There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)