William Hazlitt Quotes

For my own part, as I once said, I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.

In some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates.

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

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

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.

A common-place critic has something to say upon every occasion, and he always tells you either what is not true, or what you knew before, or what is not worth knowing. He is a person who thinks by proxy, and talks by rote. He differs with you, not because he thinks you are in the wrong, but because he thinks somebody else will think so. Nay, it would be well if he stopped here; but he will undertake to misrepresent you by anticipation, lest others should misunderstand you, and will set you right, not only in opinions which you have, but in those which you may be supposed to have.

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.

He who would see old Hoghton right
Must view it by the pale moonlight.

The path of genius is free, and its own

We are not satisfied to be right, unless we can prove others to be quite wrong.

Half the business of modern education is taken up in learning not to be ignorant; a process peculiarly unfavorable both to strength of mind and pregnancy of imagination...

The truly proud man knows neither superiors nor inferiors. The first he does not admit of: the last he does not concern himself about.

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.

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!

The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.