William Hazlitt Quotes

Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may, he will only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.

To great evils we submit, we resent little provocations.

The title of Ultracrepidarian critics has been given to those persons who find fault with small and insignificant details.

I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it.

He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan.

The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud.

A really great man has always an idea of something greater than himself.

To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.

Those who have little shall have less, and that those who have much shall take all that others have left.

Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.

By despising all that has preceded us, we teach others to despise ourselves.

The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.

We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.

Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity.

A woman's vanity is interested in making the object of her choice the god of her idolatry.

Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment; hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had and have no wish for.

The safest kind of praise is to foretell that another will become great in some particular way. It has the greatest show of magnanimity and the least of it in reality.

Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety.

Death puts an end to rivalship and competition. The dead can boast no advantage over us, nor can we triumph over them.

The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.

A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.

Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.

We must be doing something to be happy.

We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves.

Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know.

There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things-books, pictures and the face of nature.

Human life may be regarded as a succession of frontispieces. The way to be satisfied is never to look back.

True friendship is self-love at second-hand.

He who draws upon his own resources easily comes to an end of his wealth.

A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject, excites no interest in any. Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.

Those who are pleased with the fewest things know the least, as those who are pleased with everything know nothing.

Power is pleasure; and pleasure sweetens pain.

Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others, who feel that the world has done them justice.

But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit -- or a mask. . . . The foregoing maxim shows the difference between truth and sarcasm.

The public have neither shame or gratitude.

Liberty is the only true riches: of all the rest we are at once the masters and the slaves.

From the height from which the great look down on the world all the rest of mankind seem equal.

We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.

We do not attend to the advice of the sage and experienced because we think they are old, forgetting that they once were young and placed in the same situations as ourselves.

The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.

Painting for a whole morning gives one as excellent an appetite for one's dinner, as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his by riding over Banstead Downs.

Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not enough that a man has great power in himself, he must shew it to all the world in a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid.

Pride goes before a fall, they say, And yet we often find, The folks who throw all pride away Most often fall behind.

We are thankful for good-will rather than for services, for the motive than the quantum of favor received.

What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.

Familiarity confounds all traits of distinction; interest and prejudice take away the power of judging.

True modesty and true pride are much the same thing: both consist in setting a just value on ourselves - neither more nor less.

It might be argued, that to be a knave is the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary to be a learned man.

Those who have the largest hearts have the soundest understandings; and they are the truest philosophers who can forget themselves.