Literary Remains of the Late William Hazlitt, Volume 1

Front Cover
Saunders and Otley, 1836
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 165 - It may seem strange to some man that has not well weighed these things that Nature should thus dissociate and render men apt to invade and destroy one another; and he may therefore, not trusting to this inference made from the passions, desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by experience.
Page 161 - ... for wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy; judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully, one from another, ideas, wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for another.
Page 236 - These two, I say, viz., external material things as the objects of sensation, and the operations of our own minds within as the objects of reflection, are, to me, the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings.
Page 236 - The understanding seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us; and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations.
Page 234 - Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas ; how comes it to be furnished ? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge ? To this I answer in one word, from experience ; in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself.
Page 292 - The table I write on I say exists, that is I see and feel it, and if I were out of my study I should say it existed, meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it.
Page 343 - Hell, Earth, Chaos, all; the argument Held me a while, misdoubting his intent That he would ruin (for I saw him strong) The sacred truths to fable and old song, (So Sampson groped the temple's posts in spite) The world o'erwhelming to revenge his sight.
Page 291 - But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise Something which knows or perceives them; and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering, about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself; by which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived; for the existence of an idea consists in being...
Page 142 - From desire ariseth the thought of some means we have seen produce the like of that which we aim at; and from the thought of that, the thought of means to that mean; and so continually till we come to some beginning within our own power.
Page 133 - THAT when a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when- a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat else stay it, though the reason be the same, namely, imagination, that nothing can change itself, is not so easily assented to.

Bibliographic information