Quotes By William Hazlitt

Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.

To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.

The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.

The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.

The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.

Gracefulness has been defined to be the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.

I would like to spend the whole of my life traveling, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend at home.

A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage.

There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.

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.

The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors. The first he does not admit of - the last he does not concern himself about.

To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.

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.

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.

Grace in women has more effect than beauty.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.

The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.

The busier we are the more leisure we have.

You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.

Those who can command themselves command others.

Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.

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.

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.