William Hazlitt

They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.

— William Hazlitt

We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.

— William Hazlitt

They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

The worst old age is that of the mind.

— William Hazlitt

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.

— William Hazlitt

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.

— William Hazlitt

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.

— William Hazlitt

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

There is an unseemly exposure of the mind, as well as of the body.

— William Hazlitt

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.

— William Hazlitt

A full-dressed ecclesiastic is a sort of go-cart of divinity; an ethical automaton. A clerical prig is, in general, a very dangerous as well as contemptible character. The utmost that those who thus habitually confound their opinions and sentiments with the outside coverings of their bodies can aspire to, is a negative and neutral character, like wax-work figures, where the dress is done as much to the life as the man, and where both are respectable pieces of pasteboard, or harmless compositions of fleecy hosiery.

— 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 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

As is our confidence, so is our capacity.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

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

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization. It makes the meanest of us sacred --it installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death is the greatest assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch the dropsy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and mingle with the dust --the finer and more ethereal part mounts with winged spirit to watch over our latest memory, and protect our bones from insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness.

— William Hazlitt

Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

— William Hazlitt

Life is the art of being well deceived.

— William Hazlitt

Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering the weaknesses of others.

— William Hazlitt

Reflection makes men cowards.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

Anyone who has passed through 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.

— William Hazlitt

He talked on for ever; and you wished him to talk on for ever.

— William Hazlitt

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

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

General principles are not the less true or important because from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!

— William Hazlitt

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.

— William Hazlitt

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.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out.

— William Hazlitt

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

There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.

— William Hazlitt

There are persons who cannot make friends. Who are they? Those who cannot be friends. It is not the want of understanding or good nature, of entertaining or useful qualities, that you complain of: on the contrary, they have probably many points of attraction; but they have one that neutralizes all these --they care nothing about you, and are neither the better nor worse for what you think of them. They manifest no joy at your approach; and when you leave them, it is with a feeling that they can do just as well without you. This is not sullenness, nor indifference, nor absence of mind; but they are intent solely on their own thoughts, and you are merely one of the subjects they exercise them upon. They live in society as in a solitude.

— William Hazlitt

The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously; and those who have produced immortal works, have done so without knowing how or why. The greatest power operates unseen.

— William Hazlitt

If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will --the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.

— William Hazlitt

Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.

— William Hazlitt

Grace in women has more effect than beauty.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

The public have neither shame or gratitude.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.

— William Hazlitt

We can scarcely hate anyone that we know.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

The only vice which cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.

— William Hazlitt

Lest he should wander irretrievably from the right path, he stands still.

— William Hazlitt

The are of will-making chiefly consists in baffling the importunity of expectation.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

The best way to procure insults is to submit to them.

— William Hazlitt

There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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 might of been.

— William Hazlitt

Those who can command themselves command others.

— William Hazlitt

Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The learned are mere literary drudges.

— William Hazlitt

The busier we are the more leisure we have.

— William Hazlitt

The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.

— William Hazlitt

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. We cannot force love.

— William Hazlitt

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.

— 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

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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.

— William Hazlitt

No truly great person ever thought themselves so.

— William Hazlitt

Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.

— William Hazlitt

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

Nothing is more unjust or capricious than public opinion.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.

— William Hazlitt

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

— William Hazlitt

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.

— 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

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer -- that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.

— William Hazlitt

The most learned are often the most narrow minded.

— William Hazlitt

There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.

— William Hazlitt