William Hazlitt Quotes

English essayist and writer (1778–1830)

William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830) was an English writer remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism. He is sometimes esteemed the greatest English literary critic after Samuel Johnson.

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Alternative Names: Wm. Haslett • William Carew Hazlitt

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

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

Even a highwayman, in the way of trade, may blow out your brains, but if he uses foul language at the same time, I should say he was no gentleman.

Words are the only things that last forever; they are more durable than the eternal hills

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 path of genius is free, and its own

I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.

Thus, to give an obvious instance, if I have once enjoyed the cool shade of a tree, and been lulled into a deep repose by the sound of a brook running at its feet, I am sure that wherever I can find a tree and a brook, I can enjoy the same pleasure again. Hence, when I imagine these objects, I can easily form a mystic personification of the friendly power that inhabits them, Dryad or Naiad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting shade. Hence the origin of the Grecian mythology.

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.

The world has been doing little else but playing at make-believe all its lifetime.

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

As is our confidence, so is our capacity

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

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.

Persons without education certainly do not want [lack] either acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns themselves, or in things immediately within their observation; but they have no power of abstraction — they see their objects always near, never in the horizon.