William Hazlitt's Quotes

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.

Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.

Grace in women has more effect than beauty.

Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.

I would like to spend the whole of my life traveling, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend at home.

If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.

Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.

No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.

No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.

No truly great person ever thought themselves so.

Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.

Reflection makes men cowards.

That which is not, shall never be; that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident.

The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.

The seat of knowledge is in the head; of wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong, if we do not feel right.

The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.

Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.

To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.

To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.

When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

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.

Dandyism is a variety of genius.

Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.

Gracefulness has been defined to be the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.

Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.

He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.

I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.

It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.

It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.

Learning is its own exceeding great reward.

No young man ever thinks he shall die.

Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.

One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.

People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.

Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.

Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.

The busier we are the more leisure we have.

The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.

The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.

The incentive to ambition is the love of power.

The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings.

The more we do, the more we can do.

The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.

The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favor.

The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.

The public have neither shame or gratitude.

The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.

There is nothing good to be had in the country, or if there is, they will not let you have it.

Those who can command themselves command others.

Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.

To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.

To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.

To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead.

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.

We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.

We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.

We can scarcely hate anyone that we know.

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

We must be doing something to be happy.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.

Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.

Zeal will do more than knowledge.

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 study his commentators.

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.

The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.

Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.

The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.

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.

Anyone who has passed though the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.

Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.