Daily Inspiration Quote by William Hazlitt

Hazlitt’s line lands like a rebuke dressed up as aphorism: genius isn’t a sacred substance you “have,” it’s a faculty you exercise. By pairing “genius” with “humanity,” he drags the romantic myth of the lone, incandescent mind back down to the level of ordinary upkeep. Rust is the perfect image for a critic who distrusted sentimental self-mythology. Rust isn’t dramatic failure; it’s slow neglect, the quiet corrosion that happens when something sits too long in the name of purity, potential, or fear.

The intent is moral as much as aesthetic. Hazlitt wrote in a culture newly intoxicated with Romantic genius, but also newly disciplined by markets, institutions, and professional life. His warning cuts both ways: the complacent prodigy coasts on reputation, while the merely capable person can become formidable through practice. “For want of use” suggests an almost bureaucratic cause of decay, a phrase that sounds like a coroner’s report. The implication is that talent doesn’t die from critics, poverty, or bad luck alone; it often dies from postponement.

The subtext hits a deeper nerve: “humanity” rusts, too. Sympathy, imagination, and moral perception atrophy when they aren’t put to work on real people and real situations. Hazlitt, a political writer as well as a literary one, is insisting that the mind’s highest powers are not private ornaments. They are tools. If you don’t use them, they don’t stay sharp; they turn against you, becoming vanity, cynicism, or mere pose.