Words matter. These are the best William Hazlitt Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.
The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.
The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.
Gracefulness has been defined to be the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.
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.
Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.
The incentive to ambition is the love of power.
One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.
No young man ever thinks he shall die.
The most learned are often the most narrow minded.
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.
A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one – they show one another off to the best advantage.
I’m not smart, but I like to observe. Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.
People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.
Those who can command themselves command others.
We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
A wise traveler never despises his own country.
To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem… ridiculous.
As is our confidence, so is our capacity.
No truly great person ever thought themselves so.
A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles.
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.
Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.
We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.
We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.
Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.
To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.
The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.
We must be doing something to be happy.
We can scarcely hate anyone that we know.
There is nothing good to be had in the country, or if there is, they will not let you have it.
The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.
Rules and models destroy genius and art.
We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.
The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.
The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors.
A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.
Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.
I would like to spend the whole of my life traveling, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend at home.
Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.
Learning is its own exceeding great reward.
A hair in the head is worth two in the brush.
Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.
Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.
The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings.
You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.
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.
Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.
To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.
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.
Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.
An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.
If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.
If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.
