Quotes By William Hazlitt

We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.

Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.

The incentive to ambition is the love of power.

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.

Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.

The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.

That which is not, shall never be; that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident.

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.

Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.

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.

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

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.

Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.

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.

As is our confidence, so is our capacity.

Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.

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.

Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.

Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.

An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.

Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.

We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.

He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.

Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.

A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.

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 English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.

No truly great person ever thought themselves so.

The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favor.