Top 500 William Hazlitt Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 4 of 10

151. “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

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

154. “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

155. “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

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

— William Hazlitt

Featured in: Strong Quotes

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

— William Hazlitt

158. “Cowardice is not synonymous with prudence. It often happens that the better part of discretion is valor.”

— William Hazlitt

159. “The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.”

— William Hazlitt

160. “Those only deserve a monument who do not need one; that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.”

— William Hazlitt

161. “Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken.”

— William Hazlitt

162. “The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.”

— William Hazlitt

163. “Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.”

— William Hazlitt

164. “Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols – it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.”

— William Hazlitt

165. “Love at first sight is only realizing an imagination that has always haunted us; or meeting with a face, a figure, or cast of expression in perfection that we have seen and admired in a less degree or in less favorable circumstances a hundred times before.”

— William Hazlitt

166. “Within my heart is lurking suspicion, and base fear, and shame and hate; but above all, tyrannous love sits throned, crowned with her graces, silent and in tears.”

— William Hazlitt

167. “The present is an age of talkers, and not of doers; and the reason is, that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and dote on past achievement.”

— William Hazlitt

168. “Popularity is neither fame nor greatness.”

— William Hazlitt

169. “Learning is its own exceeding great reward; and at the period of which we speak, it bore other fruits, not unworthy of it.”

— William Hazlitt

170. “Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.”

— William Hazlitt

171. “In some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates.”

— William Hazlitt

172. “If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.”

— William Hazlitt

173. “Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.”

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

175. “Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man.”

— William Hazlitt

176. “Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter, we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.”

— William Hazlitt

177. “Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.”

— William Hazlitt

178. “Whatever interests is interesting.”

— William Hazlitt

179. “We are not hypocrites in our sleep.”

— William Hazlitt

180. “The essence of poetry is will and passion.”

— William Hazlitt

181. “A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.”

— William Hazlitt

182. “A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.”

— William Hazlitt

183. “We are fonder of visiting our friends in health than in sickness. We judge less favorably of their characters when any misfortune happens to them; and a lucky hit, either in business or reputation, improves even their personal appearance in our eyes.”

— William Hazlitt

184. “The diffusion of taste is not the same thing as the improvement of taste.”

— William Hazlitt

185. “To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said.”

— William Hazlitt

186. “We do not die wholly at our deaths: we have mouldered away gradually long before. Faculty after faculty, interest after interest, attachment after attachment disappear: we are torn from ourselves while living.”

— William Hazlitt

187. “The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.”

— William Hazlitt

188. “Wrong dressed out in pride, pomp, and circumstance has more attraction than abstract right.”

— William Hazlitt

189. “The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.”

— William Hazlitt

190. “So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.”

— William Hazlitt

Featured in: Reading Quotes

191. “Nothing is more unjust or capricious than public opinion.”

— William Hazlitt

192. “They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.”

— William Hazlitt

193. “Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.”

— William Hazlitt

194. “Envy is the deformed and distorted offspring of egotism; and when we reflect on the strange and disproportioned character of the parent, we cannot wonder at the perversity and waywardness of the child.”

— William Hazlitt

195. “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

196. “You will hear more good things on the outside of a stagecoach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university.”

— William Hazlitt

197. “Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.”

— William Hazlitt

198. “The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.”

— William Hazlitt

199. “One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.”

— William Hazlitt

200. “The soil of friendship is worn out with constant use. Habit may still attach us to each other, but we feel ourselves fettered by it. Old friends might be compared to old married people without the tie of children.”

— William Hazlitt