William Hazlitt Quotes

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

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

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

As is our confidence, so is our capacity

The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.

If love at first sight were mutual, or to be conciliated by kind offices; if the fondest affection were not so often repaid and chilled by indifference and scorn; if so many lovers both before and since the madman in Don Quixote had not ‘worshipped a statue, hunted the wind, cried aloud to the desert’; if friendship were lasting; if merit were renown, and renown were health, riches, and long life; or if the homage of the world were paid to conscious worth and the true aspirations after excellence, instead of its gaudy signs and outward trappings, then indeed I might be of opinion that it is better to live to others than one’s self; but as the case stands, I incline to the negative side of the question.

A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles.

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

Man is, so to speak, an endless and infinitely varied repetition: and if we know what one man feels, we so far know what a thousand feel in the sanctuary of their being. Our feeling of general humanity is at once an aggregate of a thousand different truths, and it is also the same truth a thousand times told.

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, though we may endeavour to keep some others that we think less to our credit as much as possible in the background…

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.

If I have not read a book before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

Shall I faint, now that I have poured out the spirit of my mind to the world, and treated many subjects with truth, with freedom, with power, because I have been followed with one cry of abuse ever since for not being a Government tool?

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

The most learned are often the most narrow-minded men.