William Hazlitt Quotes

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.

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

Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others!

We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.

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.

Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust; hatred alone is immortal.

Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity.

He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.

The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors.

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.

A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.

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.

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.

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

Rules and models destroy genius and art.

No truly great person ever thought themselves so.

Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.

A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.

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

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.

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.

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

The busier we are the more leisure we have.

Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.

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.

Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.

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

The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.

Those only deserve a monument who do not need one.

Learning is its own exceeding great reward.

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.

As is our confidence, so is our capacity.

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

We all wear some disguise, make some professions, use some artifice, to set ourselves off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom.

The public have neither shame or gratitude.

He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves.

Zeal will do more than knowledge.

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.

That which anyone has been long learning unwillingly, he unlearns with proportional eagerness and haste.

We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel

The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.

The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.

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

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.

The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.

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

Good temper is an estate for life.

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.

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

The soul of dispatch is decision.

Words are the only things that last for ever.

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

No really great man ever thought himself so.

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

Prejudice is never easy unless it can pass itself off for reason.

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

To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.

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

A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.

A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.

Actors are the only honest hypocrites.

A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.

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

A wise traveler never despises his own country.

True friendship is self-love at second-hand.

If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.

If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power.

We are thankful for good-will rather than for services, for the motive than the quantum of favor received.

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

First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not infrequently) to our cost, when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or studied actions. A man's look is the work of years; it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.

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

I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began.

We must be doing something to be happy.

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

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.

Good temper is one of the greatest preservers of the features.

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

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

It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.

Silence is one great art of conversation.

The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.

The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.

The more a man writes, the more he can write.

The public is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice.

The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.

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

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

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.

Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others.

Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter, we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.

Genius, like humanity, rusts for the want of use

Grace in women has more effect than beauty.

He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.

The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desires of the soul, and of which it never tires.

One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.

A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.

Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.

Life is the art of being well deceived.

Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.

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

Those who can command themselves command others.

Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.