William Hazlitt Quotes

434 Sourced Quotes

It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed every one is at a play.

William Hazlitt
To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.

William Hazlitt
We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues.

William Hazlitt
When you find out a man's ruling passion, beware of crossing him in it.

William Hazlitt
The most learned are often the most narrow-minded men.

William Hazlitt
The vices are never so well employed as in combating one another.

William Hazlitt
Silence is one great art of conversation. He is not a fool who knows when to hold his tongue; and a person may gain credit for sense, eloquence, wit, who merely says nothing.

William Hazlitt
No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.

William Hazlitt
Indeed some degree of affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body; we must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.

William Hazlitt
The greatest test of courage I can conceive is to speak the truth in the House of Commons.

William Hazlitt
But fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism: it is haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath — tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.

William Hazlitt
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.

William Hazlitt
We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.

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

William Hazlitt
Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it.

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

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
People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking.

William Hazlitt
Every man, in judging of himself, is his own contemporary. He may feel the gale of popularity, but he cannot tell how long it will last. His opinion of himself wants distance, wants time, wants numbers, to set it off and confirm it.

William Hazlitt
The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.

William Hazlitt
I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth... I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them.

William Hazlitt
The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously, and those who have produced immortal works have done so without knowing how or why.

William Hazlitt
What I mean by living to one's-self is living in the world, as in it, not of it: it is as if no one know there was such a person, and you wished no one to know it: it is to be a silent spectator of the mighty scene of things, not an object of attention or curiosity in it; to take a thoughtful, anxious interest in what is passing in the world, but not to feel the slightest inclination to make or meddle with it.

William Hazlitt
The mind revolts against certain opinions, as the stomach rejects certain foods.

William Hazlitt
Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not enough that a man has great power in himself, he must shew it to all the world in a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid.

William Hazlitt