Top 100 William Hazlitt Quotes
#1. We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues.
William Hazlitt
#2. There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.
William Hazlitt
#3. There is nothing good to be had in the country, or if there is, they will not let you have it.
William Hazlitt
#4. Women never reason, and therefore they are (comparatively) seldom wrong.
William Hazlitt
#5. Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.
William Hazlitt
#6. Books are a world in themselves, it is true; but they are not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it.
William Hazlitt
#7. The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way ... an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.
William Hazlitt
#8. It is only those who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to blood invariably on abstract ideas, that ever feel ennui.
William Hazlitt
#9. When the imagination is continually led to the brink of vice by a system of terror and denunciations, people fling themselves over the precipice from the mere dread of falling.
William Hazlitt
#10. I have a much greater ambition to be the best racket player than the best prose writer.
William Hazlitt
#11. There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!
William Hazlitt
#12. Languages happily restrict the mind to what is of its own native growth and fitted for it, as rivers and mountains bond countries; or the empire of learning, as well as states, would become unwieldy and overgrown.
William Hazlitt
#13. Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner
and then to thinking!
William Hazlitt
#14. The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science is the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
William Hazlitt
#15. Every man, in judging of himself, is his own contemporary. He may feel the gale of popularity, but he cannot tell how long it will last. His opinion of himself wants distance, wants time, wants numbers, to set it off and confirm it.
William Hazlitt
#16. To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.
William Hazlitt
#17. The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.
William Hazlitt
#18. The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame.
William Hazlitt
#19. The silence of a friend commonly amounts to treachery. His not daring to say anything in our behalf implies a tacit censure.
William Hazlitt
#22. It is well there is no one without fault; for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to s different species.
William Hazlitt
#23. The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it.
William Hazlitt
#24. We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
William Hazlitt
#25. There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.
William Hazlitt
#26. The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.
William Hazlitt
#27. Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.
William Hazlitt
#28. It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed every one is at a play.
William Hazlitt
#30. To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.
William Hazlitt
#32. What passes in the world for talent or dexterity or enterprise is often only a want of moral principle. We may succeed where others fail, not from a greater share of invention, but from not being nice in the choice of expedients.
William Hazlitt
#33. The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.
William Hazlitt
#34. Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not enough that a man has great power in himself, he must shew it to all the world in a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid.
William Hazlitt
#35. We have more faith in a well-written romance while we are reading it than in common history. The vividness of the representations in the one case more than counterbalances the mere knowledge of the truth of facts in the other.
William Hazlitt
#36. The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.
William Hazlitt
#37. Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.
William Hazlitt
#38. In public speaking, we must appeal either to the prejudices of others, or to the love of truth and justice. If we think merely of displaying our own ability, we shall ruin every cause we undertake.
William Hazlitt
#39. The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others.
William Hazlitt
#40. Gallantry to women - the sure road to their favor - is nothing but the appearance of extreme devotion to all their wants and wishes, a delight in their satisfaction, and a confidence in yourself as being able to contribute toward it
William Hazlitt
#41. Nothing is more unjust or capricious than public opinion.
William Hazlitt
#43. I'm not smart, but I like to observe.
Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why,
William Hazlitt
#44. I bear the creature no ill-will, but still I hate the very sight of it.
William Hazlitt
#46. There are some persons who never succeed from being too indolent to undertake anything; and others who regularly fail, because the instant they find success in their power, they grow indifferent, and give over the attempt.
William Hazlitt
#47. Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.
William Hazlitt
#48. It is only necessary to raise a bugbear before the English imagination in order to govern it at will. Whatever they hate or fear, they implicitly believe in, merely from the scope it gives to these passions.
William Hazlitt
#49. A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles.
William Hazlitt
#50. He who lives wisely to himself and his own heart looks at the busy world through the loopholes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray.
William Hazlitt
#52. Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.
William Hazlitt
#54. People are not soured by misfortune, but by the reception they meet with in it.
William Hazlitt
#55. The world has been doing little else but playing at make-believe all its lifetime.
William Hazlitt
#56. There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our friends. 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 Hazlitt
#57. Affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body.
William Hazlitt
#58. Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.
William Hazlitt
#59. What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.
William Hazlitt
#60. A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death.
William Hazlitt
#61. One said a tooth drawer was a kind of unconscionable trade, because his trade was nothing else but to take away those things whereby every man gets his living.
William Hazlitt
#62. It might be argued, that to be a knave is the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary to be a learned man.
William Hazlitt
#63. Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.
William Hazlitt
#64. The discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetness and cement of friendship.
William Hazlitt
#65. By retaliating our sufferings on the heads of those we love, we get rid of a present uneasiness and incur lasting remorse. With the accomplishment of our revenge our fondness returns; so that we feel the injury we have done them, even more than they do.
William Hazlitt
#66. Those only deserve a monument who do not need one; that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.
William Hazlitt
#68. To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said.
William Hazlitt
#69. Genius is a native to the soil where it grows - is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun; and is not a hothouse plant or an exotic
William Hazlitt
#70. To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous; or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.
William Hazlitt
#71. 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.
William Hazlitt
#72. They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
William Hazlitt
#73. We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.
William Hazlitt
#75. Wrong dressed out in pride, pomp, and circumstance has more attraction than abstract right.
William Hazlitt
#76. The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.
William Hazlitt
#77. You are never tired of painting, because you have to set down not what you know already, but what you have just discovered.
William Hazlitt
#78. If we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning we may only study his commentators. ["On the Ignorance of the Learned"]
William Hazlitt
#79. One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey; but I like to go by myself.
William Hazlitt
#80. No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
William Hazlitt
#81. We had rather do anything than acknowledge the merit of another if we can help it. We cannot bear a superior or an equal. Hence ridicule is sure to prevail over truth, for the malice of mankind, thrown into the scale, gives the casting weight.
William Hazlitt
#82. A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.
William Hazlitt
#83. Wonder at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.
William Hazlitt
#84. The multitude who require to be led, still hate their leaders.
William Hazlitt
#85. The title of Ultracrepidarian critics has been given to those persons who find fault with small and insignificant details.
William Hazlitt
#86. We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.
William Hazlitt
#87. The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, "No. There was a fire in the room."
William Hazlitt
#88. Tyrants forego all respect for humanity in proportion as they are sunk beneath it. Taught to believe themselves of a different species, they really become so, lose their participation with their kind, and in mimicking the god dwindle into the brute.
William Hazlitt
#89. There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiless, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself.
William Hazlitt
#90. The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.
William Hazlitt
#91. Landscape painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy.
William Hazlitt
#92. If our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as little note of them as the dial does of those that are clouded.
William Hazlitt
#93. Painting for a whole morning gives one as excellent an appetite for one's dinner, as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his by riding over Banstead Downs.
William Hazlitt
#96. Any one may mouth out a passage with theatrical cadence or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts. But to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task.
William Hazlitt
#97. Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.
William Hazlitt
#98. Those who have little shall have less, and that those who have much shall take all that others have left.
William Hazlitt
#99. Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity.
William Hazlitt
#100. Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.
William Hazlitt
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