William Hazlitt Quotes

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

Good temper is an estate for life.

Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.

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.

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

Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner — and then to thinking!

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.

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

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

The time we lose is not in overdoing what we are about, but in doing nothing.

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

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

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

Horus non numero nisi serenas—"I count only the hours that are serene"—is the motto of a sundial near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled.

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