Top 617 Quotes & Sayings by William Hazlitt - Page 3

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.

Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.

No young man ever thinks he shall die.

Anyone who has passed though the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.

He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.

Dandyism is a variety of genius.

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.

The worst old age is that of the mind.

Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others.

Envy is littleness of soul.

Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man.

Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves.

Do not quarrel with the world too soon; for, bad as it may be, it is the best we have to live in, here. If railing would have made it better, it would have been reformed long ago.

Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.

No really great man ever thought himself so.

The Irish are hearty, the Scotch plausible, the French polite, the Germans good-natured, the Italians courtly, the Spaniards reserved and decorous - the English alone seem to exist in taking and giving offense.

He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.

So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.

We are all of us, more or less, the slaves of opinion.

True friendship is self-love at second-hand.

The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.

Popularity is neither fame nor greatness.

Dandyism is a species of genius.

Love may turn to indifference with possession.

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

We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.

Actors are the only honest hypocrites.

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?

Nothing is more unjust or capricious than public opinion.

Words are the only things that last for ever.

The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.

The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.

It is better to desire than to enjoy, to love than to be loved.

The way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it.

The more a man writes, the more he can write.

We do not die wholly at our deaths: we have mouldered away gradually long before. Faculty after faculty, interest after interest, attachment after attachment disappear: we are torn from ourselves while living.

Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity.

Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.

Time,--the most independent of all things.

Mankind are a herd of knaves and fools. It is necessary to join the crowd, or get out of their way, in order not to be trampled to death by them.

Landscape painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy.

The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.

When I take up a book I have read before, I know what to expect; the satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. I shake hands with, and look our old tried and valued friend in the face,--compare notes and chat the hour away.

The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.

A thought must tell at once, or not at all.

Man is an intellectual animal, and therefore an everlasting contradiction to himself. His senses centre in himself, his ideas reach to the ends of the universe; so that he is torn in pieces between the two, without a possibility of its ever being otherwise.

I am always afraid of a fool. One cannot be sure that he is not a knave as well.

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.

Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.

Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not, and to do what we cannot.

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey; but I like to go by myself.

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.

Principle is a passion for truth.

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 throwing out [of] malicious imputations against any character leaves a stain, which no after-refutation can wipe out. To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said. The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.

While we desire, we do not enjoy; and with enjoyment desire ceases.

Common sense, to most people, is nothing more than their own opinions.

Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

The devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate; he supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him.

Our lives are ruled by impermanence. The challenge is how to create something of enduring value within the context of our impermanent lives. Soka Gakkai Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.

A nickname is the hardest stone that the devil can throw at a man.