William Hazlitt Quotes

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.

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

Poverty is the test of civility and the touchstone of friendship.

To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.

We are all of us, more or less, the slaves of opinion.

It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.

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.

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.

A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject, excites no interest in any. Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.

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

Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood.

We can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home!

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

To great evils we submit, we resent little provocations.

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

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

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

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

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.

Love and joy are twins or born of each other.

There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things-books, pictures and the face of nature.

The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to ranking spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness.

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

Wherever the Government does not emanate...from the people, the principle of the Government, the esprit de corps, the point of honour, in all those connected with it, and raised by it to privileges above the law and above humanity, will be hatred to the people.

Malice often takes the garb of truth.

The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear great ones as well as we can.

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

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

Despair swallows up cowardice.

Principle is a passion for truth.

A King (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.

Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may, he will only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.

We judge of others for the most part by their good opinion of themselves; yet nothing gives such offense or creates so many enemies, as that extreme self-complacency or superciliousness of manner, which appears to set the opinion of every one else at defiance.

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

The rule for traveling abroad is to take our common sense with us, and leave our prejudices behind.

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.

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

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.

He who does nothing renders himself incapable of doing any thing; but while we are executing any work, we are preparing and qualifying ourselves to undertake another.

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.

I do not think that what is called Love at first sight is so great an absurdity as it is sometimes imagined to be. We generally make up our minds beforehand to the sort of person we should like, grave or gay, black, brown, or fair; with golden tresses or raven locks; - and when we meet with a complete example of the qualities we admire, the bargain is soon struck.

Power is pleasure; and pleasure sweetens pain.

The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.

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

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.

Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.

No young man ever thinks he shall die.

Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities we possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.