Top 500 William Hazlitt Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “The great requisite for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination.”

— William Hazlitt

102. “Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.”

— William Hazlitt

103. “The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.”

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

105. “We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.”

— William Hazlitt

106. “Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.”

— William Hazlitt

107. “Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.”

— William Hazlitt

108. “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

109. “As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.”

— William Hazlitt

110. “The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to ranking spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness.”

— William Hazlitt

111. “Poverty is the test of civility and the touchstone of friendship.”

— William Hazlitt

112. “Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, which never surfeits. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust. Hatred alone is immortal.”

— William Hazlitt

113. “Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people’s weaknesses.”

— William Hazlitt

114. “Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization.”

— William Hazlitt

115. “Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.”

— William Hazlitt

116. “Do not quarrel with the world too soon; for, bad as it may be, it is the best we have to live in, here. If railing would have made it better, it would have been reformed long ago.”

— William Hazlitt

117. “A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.”

— William Hazlitt

118. “The silence of a friend commonly amounts to treachery. His not daring to say anything in our behalf implies a tacit censure.”

— William Hazlitt

119. “No really great man ever thought himself so.”

— William Hazlitt

120. “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.”

— William Hazlitt

121. “Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.”

— William Hazlitt

122. “Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.”

— William Hazlitt

123. “One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey; I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone.”

— William Hazlitt

124. “The surest hindrance of success is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the judgment of the public. He who is determined not to be satisfied with anything short of perfection will never do anything to please himself or others.”

— William Hazlitt

125. “Elegance is something more than ease; it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling, spirited yet delicate.”

— William Hazlitt

126. “Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others.”

— William Hazlitt

127. “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.”

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

129. “All is without form and void. Someone said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing and very like.”

— William Hazlitt

130. “Like a rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of going home, or that it will soon be night.”

— William Hazlitt

131. “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

132. “It is well there is no one without fault; for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to s different species.”

— William Hazlitt

133. “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

134. “Good-nature, or what is often considered as such, is the most selfish of all the virtues: it is nine times out of ten mere indolence of disposition.”

— William Hazlitt

135. “The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.”

— William Hazlitt

136. “The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.”

— William Hazlitt

137. “Who likes not his business, his business likes not him.”

— William Hazlitt

138. “Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.”

— William Hazlitt

139. “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

140. “A man’s reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof.”

— William Hazlitt

141. “We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically.”

— William Hazlitt

142. “The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.”

— William Hazlitt

143. “By despising all that has preceded us, we teach others to despise ourselves.”

— William Hazlitt

144. “Love turns, with little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal.”

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

146. “Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge.”

— William Hazlitt

147. “We go on a journey to be free of all impediments; to leave ourselves behind much more than to get rid of others.”

— William Hazlitt

148. “There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.”

— William Hazlitt

149. “A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death.”

— William Hazlitt

150. “To speak highly of one with whom we are intimate is a species of egotism. Our modesty as well as our jealousy teaches us caution on this subject.”

— William Hazlitt