William Hazlitt Quotes & Sayings

Habit in most cases hardens and encrusts by taking away the keener edge of our sensations: but does it not in others quicken and refine, by giving a mechanical facility and by engrafting an acquired sense? — William Hazlitt

Half the business of modern education is taken up in learning not to be ignorant; a process peculiarly unfavorable both to strength of mind and pregnancy of imagination ... — William Hazlitt

The more a man writes, the more he can write. — William Hazlitt

He who draws upon his own resources easily comes to an end of his wealth. — William Hazlitt

Those who have had none of the cares of this life to harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to the hopes and fears of the next to vary the prospect before them. — William Hazlitt

The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues. — William Hazlitt

True friendship is self-love at second hand; where, as in a flattering mirror we may see our virtues magnified and our errors softened, and where we may fancy our opinion of ourselves confirmed by an impartial and faithful witness. — William Hazlitt

Those who can command themselves command others. — William Hazlitt

Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves. — William Hazlitt

The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty. — William Hazlitt

We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation. — William Hazlitt

If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory. — William Hazlitt

Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence, and see all things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and hope; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They have not been "hurt by the archers", nor has the iron entered their souls. The world has no hand on them. — William Hazlitt

Popularity is neither fame nor greatness. — William Hazlitt

A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common. — William Hazlitt

Habit is necessary to give power. — William Hazlitt

Avarice is the miser's dream, as fame is the poet's. — William Hazlitt

He who would see old Hoghton right Must view it by the pale moonlight. — William Hazlitt

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

The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman is this: The one thinks everything right that is French, while the other thinks everything wrong that is not English. — William Hazlitt

The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods. — William Hazlitt

Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him. — William Hazlitt

The way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it. — William Hazlitt

Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as the detecting another in an untruth. It strikes at the root of our confidence ever after. — William Hazlitt

Men of gravity are intellectual stammerers, whose thoughts move slowly. — William Hazlitt

The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself; that is impatient of all limit; that (as flame bends to flame) strives to link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur; to enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest manner. — William Hazlitt

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

The time we lose is not in overdoing what we are about, but in doing nothing. — William Hazlitt

A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof. The throwing out [of] malicious imputations against any character leaves a stain, which no after-refutation can wipe out. To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said. The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it. — William Hazlitt

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

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

Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength. There is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage. — William Hazlitt

Tears may be considered as the natural and involuntary resource of the mind overcome by some sudden and violent emotion, before ithas had time to reconcile its feelings to the change in circumstances: while laughter may be defined to be the same sort of convulsive and involuntary movement, occasioned by mere sur prise or contrast (in the absence of any more serious emotion), before it has time to reconcile its belief to contradictory appearances. — William Hazlitt

Poverty, labor, and calamity are not without their luxuries, which the rich, the indolent, and the fortunate in vain seek for. — William Hazlitt

Well I've had a happy life. — William Hazlitt

In love we do not think of moral qualities, and scarcely of intellectual ones. Temperament and manner alone, with beauty, excite love. — William Hazlitt

As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth. — William Hazlitt

Books wind into the heart. — William Hazlitt

The incentive to ambition is the love of power. — William Hazlitt

We prefer a person with vivacity and high spirits, though bordering upon insolence, to the timid and pusillanimous; we are fonder of wit joined to malice than of dullness without it. — William Hazlitt

A nickname is the hardest stone that the devil can throw at a man. — William Hazlitt

The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice. — William Hazlitt

The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it. — William Hazlitt

Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps. — William Hazlitt

An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may. — William Hazlitt

The great have private feelings of their own, to which the interests of humanity and justice must curtsy. Their interests are so far from being the same as those of the community, that they are in direct and necessary opposition to them; their power is at the expense of OUR weakness; their riches of OUR poverty; their pride of OUR degradation; their splendour of OUR wretchedness; their tyranny of OUR servitude. — William Hazlitt

There is some virtue in almost every vice, except hypocrisy; and even that, while it is a mockery of virtue, is at the same time a compliment to it. — William Hazlitt

Everything is in motion. Everything flows. Everything is vibrating. — William Hazlitt

There is a quiet repose and steadiness about the happiness of age, if the life has been well spent. Its feebleness is not painful. The nervous system has lost its acuteness. But, in mature years we feel that a burn, a scald, a cut, is more tolerable than it was in the sensitive period of youth. — William Hazlitt

The assumption of merit is easier, less embarrassing, and more effectual than the actual attainment of it. — William Hazlitt

A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. — William Hazlitt

Popularity disarms envy in well-disposed minds. Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others who feel that the world has done them justice. When success has not this effect in opening the mind, it is a sign that it has been ill deserved. — William Hazlitt

People are not soured by misfortune, but by the reception they meet with in it. — William Hazlitt

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

I do not care a fig for any woman that knows even what an author means. — William Hazlitt

Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it. — William Hazlitt

We are not satisfied to be right, unless we can prove others to be quite wrong. — William Hazlitt

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

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

Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for - they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood? — William Hazlitt

Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses. — William Hazlitt

Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs. The heaviest charge we can bring against the general texture of society is that it is commonplace. Our fancied superiority to others is in some one thing which we think most of because we excel in it, or have paid most attention to it; whilst we overlook their superiority to us in something else which they set equal and exclusive store by. — William Hazlitt

Good temper is an estate for life. — William Hazlitt

Our contempt for others proves nothing but the illiberality and narrowness of our own views. — William Hazlitt

The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out. — William Hazlitt

Whatever excites the spirit of contradiction is capable of producing the last effects of heroism; which is only the highest pitch of obstinacy, in a good or bad cause, in wisdom or folly. — William Hazlitt

You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion. — William Hazlitt

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

No really great man ever thought himself so. — William Hazlitt

The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame. — William Hazlitt

Man is a poetical animal, and delights in fiction. — William Hazlitt

Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects. — William Hazlitt

The essence of poetry is will and passion. — William Hazlitt

Truth from the mouth of an honest man and severity from a good-natured man have a double effect. — William Hazlitt

Words are the only things that last forever; they are more durable than the eternal hills — William Hazlitt

Women never reason, and therefore they are (comparatively) seldom wrong. — William Hazlitt

To impress the idea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it. — William Hazlitt

Any woman may act the part of a coquette successfully who has the reputation without the scruples of modesty. If a woman passes the bounds of propriety for our sakes, and throws herself unblushingly at our heads, we conclude it is either from a sudden and violent liking, or from extraordinary merit on our parts, either of which is enough to turn any man's head who has a single spark of gallantry or vanity in his composition. — William Hazlitt

Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority; natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself. — William Hazlitt

Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly. — William Hazlitt

Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity. — William Hazlitt

The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading while we are young. I have had as much of this pleasure perhaps as any one. — William Hazlitt

Comedy naturally wears itself out - destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at. — William Hazlitt

A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage. — William Hazlitt

The title of Ultracrepidarian critics has been given to those persons who find fault with small and insignificant details. — William Hazlitt

We do not attend to the advice of the sage and experienced because we think they are old, forgetting that they once were young and placed in the same situations as ourselves. — William Hazlitt

The great requisite for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination. — William Hazlitt

A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear. — William Hazlitt

In some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates. — William Hazlitt

The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life. — William Hazlitt

The diffusion of taste is not the same thing as the improvement of taste. — William Hazlitt

As a general rule, those who are dissatisfied with themselves will seek to go out of themselves into an ideal world. Persons in strong health and spirits, who take plenty of air and exercise, who are "in favor with, their stars," and have a thorough relish of the good things of this life, seldom devote themselves in despair to religion or the muses. Sedentary, nervous, hypochondriacal people, on the contrary, are forced, for want of an appetite for the real and substantial, to look out for a more airy food and speculative comforts. — William Hazlitt

I'm not smart, but I like to observe.
Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why, — William Hazlitt

A great man la an abstraction of some one excellence; but whoever fancies himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of excellence or defect of himself or others. — William Hazlitt

We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again. — William Hazlitt

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

Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them? — William Hazlitt

We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts. — William Hazlitt

When I take up a book I have read before, I know what to expect; the satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. I shake hands with, and look our old tried and valued friend in the face,
compare notes and chat the hour away. — William Hazlitt

You will hear more good things on the outside of a stagecoach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university. — William Hazlitt