Will Hazlitt Quotes

Life is the art of being well deceived.

Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.

Like a rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of going home, or that it will soon be night.

Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.

He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.

To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.

The more we do, the more we can do.

Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others!

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

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

The soul of dispatch is decision.

The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way ... an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.

Sincerity has to do with the connexion between our words and thoughts, and not between our beliefs and actions.

A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof.

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

No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.

I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me

Men of gravity are intellectual stammerers, whose thoughts move slowly.

We are governed by sympathy; and the extent of our sympathy is determined by that of our sensibility

It is better to drink of deep grief than to taste shallow pleasures.

The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.

The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.

Good temper is one of the great preservers of the features.

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

The fear of approaching death, which in youth we imagine must cause inquietude to the aged, is very seldom the source of much uneasiness.

Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart.

We learn to curb our will and keep our overt actions within the bounds of humanity, long before we can subdue our sentiments and imaginations to the same mild tone.

The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it.

The assumption of merit is easier, less embarrassing, and more effectual than the actual attainment of it.

He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves.

The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.

Spleen can subsist on any kind of food.

We can scarcely hate anyone that we know.

There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amends for everything. To be young is to be as one of the Immortals.

We would willingly, and without remorse, sacrifice not only the present moment, but all the interval (no matter how long) that separates us from any favorite object.

The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.

A mighty stream of tendency.

There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. "I count only the hours that are serene.".

Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.

They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.

It is well there is no one without fault; for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to s different species.

If we use no ceremony towards others, we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect.

An accomplished coquette excites the passions of others, in proportion as she feels none herself.

The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men.

A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.

Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination.

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

The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.

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 study his commentators.

If we are long absent from our friends, we forget them; if we are constantly with them, we despise them.