William Hazlitt Quotes

Actors are the only honest hypocrites.

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

Good-nature, or what is often considered as such, is the most selfish of all the virtues: it is nine times out of ten mere indolence of disposition.

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

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

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

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

This Journal, then, is a depository for every species of political sophistry and personal calumny. There is no abuse or corruption that does not there find a jesuitical palliation or a bare-faced vindication. There we meet the slime of hypocrisy, the varnish of courts, the cant of pedantry, the cobwebs of the law, the iron hand of power. Its object is as mischievous as the means by which it is pursued are odious.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Todo aquello que se encuentra fuera del alcance del sentido y del conocimiento, todo aquello que se percibe defectuosamente, la imaginación lo recompone a su antojo; y todo menos el momento presente, menos el lugar presente, la pasión lo reclama para sí, lo incuba con las alas extendidas y le imprime su propia imagen. La pasión es dueña del espacio infinito y los objetos distantes nos gustan porque limitan con sus confines y se moldean con su contacto.

Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life.

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