Top 500 William Hazlitt Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 9 of 10

401. “What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.”

— William Hazlitt

402. “It is only those who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to blood invariably on abstract ideas, that ever feel ennui.”

— William Hazlitt

403. “A man is a hypocrite only when he affects to take a delight in what he does not feel, not because he takes a perverse delight in opposite things.”

— William Hazlitt

404. “The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.”

— William Hazlitt

405. “Habit is necessary to give power.”

— William Hazlitt

406. “What passes in the world for talent or dexterity or enterprise is often only a want of moral principle. We may succeed where others fail, not from a greater share of invention, but from not being nice in the choice of expedients.”

— William Hazlitt

407. “Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.”

— William Hazlitt

408. “The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.”

— William Hazlitt

409. “The secret of the difficulties of those people who make a great deal of money, and yet are always in want of it, is this-they throw it away as soon as they get it on the first whim or extravagance that strikes them, and have nothing left to meet ordinary expenses or discharge old debts.”

— William Hazlitt

410. “People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.”

— William Hazlitt

411. “To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous; or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.”

— William Hazlitt

412. “Prejudice is never easy unless it can pass itself off for reason.”

— William Hazlitt

413. “The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.”

— William Hazlitt

414. “The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.”

— William Hazlitt

415. “The vices are never so well employed as in combating one another.”

— William Hazlitt

416. “Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity.”

— William Hazlitt

417. “I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.”

— William Hazlitt

418. “We trifle with, make sport of, and despise those who are attached to us, and follow those that fly from us.”

— William Hazlitt

419. “A man who is determined never to move out of the beaten road cannot lose his way.”

— William Hazlitt

420. “A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.”

— William Hazlitt

421. “Affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body.”

— William Hazlitt

422. “The look of a gentleman is little else than the reflection of the looks of the world.”

— William Hazlitt

423. “He who draws upon his own resources easily comes to an end of his wealth.”

— William Hazlitt

424. “The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear great ones as well as we can.”

— William Hazlitt

425. “A great man la an abstraction of some one excellence; but whoever fancies himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of excellence or defect of himself or others.”

— William Hazlitt

426. “The youth is better than the old age of friendship.”

— William Hazlitt

427. “If we use no ceremony towards others, we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect.”

— William Hazlitt

428. “Popularity disarms envy in well-disposed minds. Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others who feel that the world has done them justice. When success has not this effect in opening the mind, it is a sign that it has been ill deserved.”

— William Hazlitt

429. “As we are poetical in our natures, so we delight in fable.”

— William Hazlitt

430. “We do not attend to the advice of the sage and experienced because we think they are old, forgetting that they once were young and placed in the same situations as ourselves.”

— William Hazlitt

431. “We all wear some disguise, make some professions, use some artifice, to set ourselves off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom.”

— William Hazlitt

432. “The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.”

— William Hazlitt

433. “A taste for liberal art is necessary to complete the character of a gentleman, Science alone is hard and mechanical. It exercises the understanding upon things out of ourselves, while it leaves the affections unemployed, or engrossed with our own immediate, narrow interests.”

— William Hazlitt

434. “I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what is to be done in given circumstances and does it. He does not beat about the bush for difficulties or excuses, but goes the shortest and most effectual way to work to attain his own ends, or to accomplish a useful object.”

— William Hazlitt

435. “Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.”

— William Hazlitt

436. “It might be argued, that to be a knave is the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary to be a learned man.”

— William Hazlitt

437. “The confined air of a metropolis is hurtful to the minds and bodies of those who have never lived out of it. It is impure, stagnant – without breathing-space to allow a larger view of ourselves or others – and gives birth to a puny, sickly, unwholesome, and degenerate race of beings.”

— William Hazlitt

438. “We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.”

— William Hazlitt

439. “It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed every one is at a play.”

— William Hazlitt

440. “The multitude who require to be led, still hate their leaders.”

— William Hazlitt

441. “Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him.”

— William Hazlitt

442. “Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity.”

— William Hazlitt

443. “Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs.”

— William Hazlitt

444. “Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it.”

— William Hazlitt

445. “An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.”

— William Hazlitt

446. “A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject, excites no interest in any. Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.”

— William Hazlitt

447. “Good temper is an estate for life.”

— William Hazlitt

448. “Keep your misfortunes to yourself.”

— William Hazlitt

449. “Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference.”

— William Hazlitt

450. “The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people’s virtues.”

— William Hazlitt