Daily Inspiration Quote by William Hazlitt

Hazlitt’s line is a slap disguised as a diagnosis: the “public” isn’t a civic ideal but a volatile crowd, incapable of the two emotions that would make it morally legible. Shame would require memory and self-recognition; gratitude would require loyalty and proportion. By denying both, Hazlitt strips away the comforting fantasy that audiences, electorates, and reading publics behave like reasonable individuals with stable character. They don’t. They surge, they forget, they move on.

The intent is partly self-protective. As a critic writing in a bruisingly partisan print culture, Hazlitt knew how quickly taste turns into mob judgment. Today’s applause becomes tomorrow’s sneer, not because new evidence arrives, but because attention is a weather system. “Neither shame nor gratitude” is Hazlitt’s way of saying: don’t expect reciprocity from mass approval. The crowd will take what it wants from you and feel entitled to more; it will punish you for expecting fairness.

The subtext is also political. Hazlitt is pushing against a sentimental view of public opinion as a moral court. Public opinion, he suggests, is closer to a marketplace: it rewards novelty, punishes insistence, and rarely pays debts. That cynicism isn’t just misanthropy; it’s a warning about basing your ethics on applause. If the public can’t blush and can’t thank, then the artist, thinker, or leader who chases its affection will end up practicing a kind of emotional austerity - or opportunism. Hazlitt prefers the former.