Top 500 William Hazlitt Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Our notions with respect to the importance of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery. The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but of our passions.”

— William Hazlitt

252. “The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life.”

— William Hazlitt

253. “To die is only to be as we were before we were born; yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance, in contemplating this last idea.”

— William Hazlitt

254. “That which anyone has been long learning unwillingly, he unlearns with proportional eagerness and haste.”

— William Hazlitt

255. “But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.”

— William Hazlitt

256. “We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.”

— William Hazlitt

257. “We learn to curb our will and keep our overt actions within the bounds of humanity, long before we can subdue our sentiments and imaginations to the same mild tone.”

— William Hazlitt

258. “There are some persons who never succeed from being too indolent to undertake anything; and others who regularly fail, because the instant they find success in their power, they grow indifferent, and give over the attempt.”

— William Hazlitt

259. “A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer – that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.”

— William Hazlitt

260. “The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice.”

— William Hazlitt

261. “Those only deserve a monument who do not need one.”

— William Hazlitt

262. “One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.”

— William Hazlitt

263. “The florid style is the reverse of the familiar. The last is employed as an unvarnished medium to convey ideas; the first is resorted to as a spangled veil to conceal the want of them. When there is nothing to be set down but words, it costs little to have them fine.”

— William Hazlitt

264. “Those who object to wit are envious of it.”

— William Hazlitt

265. “If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power.”

— William Hazlitt

266. “Humour is the making others act or talk absurdly and unconsciously; wit is the pointing out and ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more or less ill-nature.”

— William Hazlitt

267. “Reflection makes men cowards.”

— William Hazlitt

268. “Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength. There is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage.”

— William Hazlitt

269. “To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.”

— William Hazlitt

270. “Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not, and to do what we cannot.”

— William Hazlitt

271. “The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne from a sort of dignity belonging to them.”

— William Hazlitt

272. “Time, – the most independent of all things.”

— William Hazlitt

273. “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

274. “Political truth is libel; religious truth, blasphemy.”

— William Hazlitt

275. “Those who have little shall have less, and that those who have much shall take all that others have left.”

— William Hazlitt

276. “No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.”

— William Hazlitt

277. “Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.”

— William Hazlitt

278. “Power is pleasure; and pleasure sweetens pain.”

— William Hazlitt

279. “One said a tooth drawer was a kind of unconscionable trade, because his trade was nothing else but to take away those things whereby every man gets his living.”

— William Hazlitt

280. “I have known persons without a friend – never any one without some virtue. The virtues of the former conspired with their vices to make the whole world their enemies.”

— William Hazlitt

281. “What are the publications that succeed? Those that pretend to teach the public that the persons they have been accustomed unwittingly to look up to as the lights of the earth are no better than themselves.”

— William Hazlitt

282. “When you find out a man’s ruling passion, beware of crossing him in it.”

— William Hazlitt

283. “There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things-books, pictures and the face of nature.”

— William Hazlitt

284. “A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.”

— William Hazlitt

285. “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

286. “I am always afraid of a fool. One cannot be sure that he is not a knave as well.”

— William Hazlitt

287. “Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority; natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself.”

— William Hazlitt

288. “Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.”

— William Hazlitt

289. “The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others.”

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

291. “We prefer ourselves to others, only because we a have more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person’s.”

— William Hazlitt

292. “Humanity is to be met with in a den of robbers.”

— William Hazlitt

293. “Languages happily restrict the mind to what is of its own native growth and fitted for it, as rivers and mountains bond countries; or the empire of learning, as well as states, would become unwieldy and overgrown.”

— William Hazlitt

294. “There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.”

— William Hazlitt

295. “To great evils we submit; yet we resent little provocations.”

— William Hazlitt

296. “There cannot be a surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel.”

— William Hazlitt

297. “One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less lone than when alone... I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country... I like solitude, when I give myself up to it, for the sake of solitude...”

— William Hazlitt

298. “There is a quiet repose and steadiness about the happiness of age, if the life has been well spent. Its feebleness is not painful. The nervous system has lost its acuteness. But, in mature years we feel that a burn, a scald, a cut, is more tolerable than it was in the sensitive period of youth.”

— William Hazlitt

299. “The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.”

— William Hazlitt

300. “A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.”

— William Hazlitt