“The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.”
― William Hazlitt
“The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.”
― William Hazlitt
“He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.”
― William Hazlitt
“Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.”
― William Hazlitt
“Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.”
[The Sick Chamber (The New Monthly Magazine , August 1830)]”
― William Hazlitt
“In some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates.”
― William Hazlitt
“Love turns, with little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal.”
― William Hazlitt
“The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.”
― William Hazlitt
“We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.”
― William Hazlitt
“The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.
(1778 – 1830)”
― William Hazlitt
“Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty, and your animal spirits.”
― William Hazlitt
“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.”
― William Hazlitt
“Life is the art of being well-deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.”
― William Hazlitt
“Travel’s greatest purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”
― William Hazlitt
“The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.”
― William Hazlitt
“I’m not smart, but I like to observe.
Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why,”
― William Hazlitt
“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.”
― William Hazlitt
“Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?”
― William Hazlitt
“Prejudice is the child of ignorance.”
― William Hazlitt
“A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.”
― William Hazlitt
“If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.”
― William Hazlitt
“I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me besides what interferes with my own ease and interest. I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many enemies and few friends; for the public know nothing of well-wishers, and keep a wary eye on those who would reform them.”
― William Hazlitt
“In private life do we not see hypocrisy, servility, selfishness, folly, and impudence succeed, while modesty shrinks from the encounter, and merit is trodden under foot? How often is ‘the rose plucked from the forehead of a virtuous love to plant a blister there!’ What chance is there of the success of real passion? What certainty of its continuance? Seeing all this as I do, and unravelling the web of human life into its various threads of meanness, spite, cowardice, want of feeling, and want of understanding, of indifference towards others, and ignorance of ourselves, – seeing custom prevail over all excellence, itself giving way to infamy – mistaken as I have been in my public and private hopes, calculating others from myself, and calculating wrong; always disappointed where I placed most reliance; 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.”
― William Hazlitt
“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?”
― William Hazlitt
“The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud.”
― William Hazlitt
“We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.”
― William Hazlitt
“The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.”
― William Hazlitt
“Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant “satisfaction to the thought.” This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic.”
― William Hazlitt
“Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.”
― William Hazlitt
“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.”
― William Hazlitt
“We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.”
― William Hazlitt
“Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.”
― William Hazlitt
“Modern fanaticism thrives in proportion to the quanitity of contradictions and nonsense it poures down the throats of the gaping multitude, and the jargon and mysticism it offers to their wonder and credulity.”
― William Hazlitt
“Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity.”
― William Hazlitt
“Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.”
― William Hazlitt
“Learning is its own exceeding great reward.”
― William Hazlitt
“Any one may mouth out a passage with theatrical cadence or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts. But to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task.”
― William Hazlitt
“Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone – but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.”
― William Hazlitt
“the old maxim… “there are three things necessary to success in life–Impudence! Impudence! Impudence!”
― william hazlitt
“The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman is this: The one thinks everything right that is French, while the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.”
― William Hazlitt
“have I not the reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.”
― William Hazlitt
“The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.”
― William Hazlitt
“Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours’ march to dinner — and then to thinking!”
― William Hazlitt
“No truly great person ever thought themselves so.”
― William Hazlitt
“The seat of knowledge is in the head; of wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong, if we do not feel right.”
― William Hazlitt
“Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.”
― William Hazlitt
“He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves.”
― William Hazlitt
“We hate old friends: we hate old books: we hate old opinions; and at last we come to hate ourselves.”
― William Hazlitt
“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and endure very much”
― William Hazlitt