William Hazlitt Quotes
Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.
I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.
Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.
People addicted to secrecy are so without knowing why; they are not so for cause, but for secrecy's sake.
Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism ... tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.
Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.
It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.
We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.
Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.
The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.
The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.
The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors. The first he does not admit of - the last he does not concern himself about.
Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.
It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.
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.
We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically.
Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.
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.
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.
To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
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!
He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.
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.
A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof.
The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame.
Painters... are the most lively observers of what passes in the world about them, and the closest observers of what passes in their own minds.
A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage.
The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.
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.
We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
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.
Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.
The fear of approaching death, which in youth we imagine must cause inquietude to the aged, is very seldom the source of much uneasiness.
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.
The amiable is the voluptuous in expression or manner. The sense of pleasure in ourselves is that which excites it in others; or, the art of pleasing is to seem pleased.
