William Hazlitt Quotes

That which anyone has been long learning unwillingly, he unlearns with proportional eagerness and haste.

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

The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to rankling spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness, and a narrow, jealous, inquisitorial watchfulness over the actions and motives of others.

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!

Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.

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

"If we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning we may only study his commentators. ["On the Ignorance of the Learned"]"

Unlimited power is helpless, as arbitrary power is capricious. Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We can attempt nothing great, but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter: we can persevere in nothing great, but from a pride in overcoming them.

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

Love turns, with little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal.

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.

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

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.

A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one — they shew one another off to the best advantage.

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