Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.
William HazlittRead
One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole or ace, than if one has never had a chance of winning it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the emotional investment in competition and the pain of narrowly missing victory.
William Hazlitt's quote underscores the human tendency to feel more frustration and disappointment over a close loss than over a game never played. It illuminates our emotional connection to the hope of succeeding, suggesting that proximity to victory intensifies our feelings of regret and vexation compared to a complete lack of opportunity.
Themes
CompetitionLossFrustrationEmotionHopeVictory
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational talk about sportsmanship and competition.
More from William Hazlitt
All quotes βThe world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.
William HazlittRead
Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.
William HazlittRead
We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
William HazlittRead
There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.
William HazlittRead
Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.
William HazlittRead
Similar quotes
And one more idea which may be laughed and sneered at in some supposedly sophisticated circles, but I just have to believe that the loving God who has blessed this land and thus made us a good and caring people should never have been expelled from America's classrooms. It's time to welcome Him back, because whenever we've opened ourselves and trusted in Him, we've gained not only moral courage but intellectual strength.
Ronald ReaganRead
All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly.
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From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
SocratesRead
Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, and lessens the frictions of social contacts.
Clare Boothe LuceRead
It is not that the child lives in a world of imagination, but that the child within us survives and starts into life only at rare moments of recollection, which makes us believe, and it is not true, that, as children, we were imaginative?
Cesare PaveseRead
Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.
Jacob BronowskiRead