William Hazlitt Quotes

Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.

Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, which never surfeits. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust. Hatred alone is immortal.

Learning is its own exceeding great reward.

We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.

Modern fanaticism thrives in proportion to the quanitity of contradictions and nonsense it poures down the throats of the gaping multitude, and the jargon and mysticism it offers to their wonder and credulity.

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

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.

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

No truly great person ever thought themselves so.

"the old maxim... "there are three things necessary to success in life — Impudence! Impudence! Impudence!

Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity.

The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman is this: The one thinks everything right that is French, while the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.

have I not the reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.

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!

Reading is perhaps the greatest pleasure you will have in life; the one you will think of longest, and repent of least.