Top 500 William Hazlitt Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.”

— William Hazlitt

252. “The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.”

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

256. “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

257. “Reflection makes men cowards.”

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

259. “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

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

— William Hazlitt

261. “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

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

266. “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

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

— William Hazlitt

268. “There is some virtue in almost every vice, except hypocrisy; and even that, while it is a mockery of virtue, is at the same time a compliment to it.”

— William Hazlitt

269. “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

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

275. “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

276. “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

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

— William Hazlitt

278. “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

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

— William Hazlitt

280. “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

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

— William Hazlitt

282. “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

283. “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

284. “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

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

— William Hazlitt

286. “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

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

— William Hazlitt

288. “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

289. “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

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

— William Hazlitt

291. “Abuse is an indirect species of homage.”

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

293. “Anyone who has passed though 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

294. “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

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

— William Hazlitt

296. “Love may turn to indifference with possession.”

— William Hazlitt

297. “Wonder at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.”

— William Hazlitt

298. “A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one – they show one another off to the best advantage.”

— William Hazlitt

299. “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

300. “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