William Hazlitt Quotes

434 Sourced Quotes

The objects that we have known in better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our affections, and give us strength to await our future lot. The future is like a dead wall or a thick mist hiding all objects from our view; the past is alive and stirring with objects, bright or solemn, and of unfading interest.

William Hazlitt
Any one who has passed through 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.

William Hazlitt
When a man is dead, they put money in his coffin, erect monuments to his memory, and celebrate the anniversary of his birthday in set speeches. Would they take any notice of him if he were living? No!

William Hazlitt
Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

William Hazlitt
Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination.

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
There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.

William Hazlitt
I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began.

William Hazlitt
A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof. The throwing out [of] malicious imputations against any character leaves a stain, which no after-refutation can wipe out. To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said. The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.

William Hazlitt
Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge.

William Hazlitt
I think it is a rule that men in business should not be taught other things. Any one will be almost sure to make money who has no other idea in his head. A college education, or intense study of abstract truth, will not enable a man to drive a bargain … The best politicians are not those who are deeply grounded in mathematical or in ethical science. Rules stand in the way of expediency. Many a man has been hindered from pushing his fortune in the world by an early cultivation of his moral sense.

William Hazlitt
True friendship is self-love at second hand; where, as in a flattering mirror we may see our virtues magnified and our errors softened, and where we may fancy our opinion of ourselves confirmed by an impartial and faithful witness.

William Hazlitt
Grace is the absence of every thing that indicates pain or difficulty, or hesitation or incongruity.

William Hazlitt
Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others!

William Hazlitt
He talked on for ever; and you wished him to talk on for ever.

William Hazlitt
Some persons make promises for the pleasure of breaking them.

William Hazlitt
You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion.

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

William Hazlitt
If our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as little note of them as the dial does of those that are clouded.

William Hazlitt
If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.

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
It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.

William Hazlitt
The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakespeare, every thing.

William Hazlitt
The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of dead men.

William Hazlitt
The devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate; he supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him.

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

William Hazlitt
Mr Wordsworth's genius is a pure emanation of the Spirit of the Age. Had he lived in any other period of the world, he would never have been heard of.

William Hazlitt
A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn.

William Hazlitt
Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as the detecting another in an untruth. It strikes at the root of our confidence ever after.

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