William Hazlitt Quotes

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.

The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.

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.

One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.

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

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

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.

To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.

The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear great ones as well as we can.

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.

The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.

The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.

The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.

To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.

Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.

Cowardice is not synonymous with prudence. It often happens that the better part of discretion is valor.

The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.

Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.

I have known persons without a friend--never any one without some virtue. The virtues of the former conspired with their vices to make the whole world their enemies.

A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common.

We talk little when we do not talk about ourselves.

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

The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.

Genius is native to the soil where it grows — is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun — and is not a hot - house plant or an exotic.

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

Habit is necessary to give power.

The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty.

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

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

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

The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods.

Despair swallows up cowardice.

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.

A mighty stream of tendency.

Good temper is an estate for life.

When you find out a man's ruling passion, beware of crossing him in it.

Persons who undertake to pry into, or cleanse out all the filth of a common sewer, either cannot have very nice noses, or will soon lose them.

Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere.

Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.

To speak highly of one with whom we are intimate is a species of egotism. Our modesty as well as our jealousy teaches us caution on this subject.

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

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.

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

Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.

Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.

Dandyism is a variety of genius.

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