Quotes By 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.

As is our confidence, so is our capacity.

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.

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.

The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.

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.

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.

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

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.

People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.

No truly great person ever thought themselves so.

There is nothing good to be had in the country, or if there is, they will not let you have it.

It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.

We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.

Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.

Everything is in motion. Everything flows. Everything is vibrating.

Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.

Good temper is one of the greatest preservers of the features.

A hair in the head is worth two in the brush.

The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings.

We can scarcely hate anyone that we know.

There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.