William Hazlitt Quotations | Page 2

Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.

We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.

Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.

If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.

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

Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.

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

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

Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.

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

It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.

It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.

No young man ever thinks he shall die.

Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.

The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.

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

There is nothing good to be had in the country, or if there is, they will not let you have it.

To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead.

We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.

We can scarcely hate anyone that we know.

Man is an individual animal with narrow faculties, but infinite desires, which he is anxious to concentrate in some one object within the grasp of his imagination, and where, if he cannot be all that he wishes himself, he may at least contemplate his own pride, vanity, and passions, displayed in their most extravagant dimensions in a being no bigger and no better than himself.

One would imagine that books were, like women, the worse for being old : that they open their leaves more cordially; that the spirit of enjoyment wears out with the spirit of novelty; and that after a certain age, it is high time to put them on the s

One is never tired of painting, because you have to set down, not what you knew already, but what you have just discovered. There is a continual creation out of nothing going on.

No one is idle, who can do any thing.

Never anticipate evils; or, because you cannot have things exactly as you wish, make them out worse than they are, through mere spite and willfulness.

No young man believes he shall ever die

Right, in a word, is the duty which each man owes to himself; or it is that portion of the general good of which (as being principally interested) he is made the special judge, and which is put under his immediate keeping.

If the schemes of Utopians could be realized, the tone of society would be changed from what it is, into a sort of insipid high life. There could be no fine tragedies written; nor would there be any pleasure in seeing them. We tend to this conclusion already with the progress of civilization.

Learning is the knowledge of that which is not generally known to others, and which we can only derive at second-hand from books or other artificial sources. The knowledge of that which is before us, or about us, which appeals to our experience, passions, and pursuits, to the bosom and businesses of men, is not learning. Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know.

Lest he should wander irretrievably from the right path, he stands still.

There are two classes of people that I have observed who are not so distinct as might be imagined -- those who cannot keep their own money in their hands, and those who cannot keep their hands from other people's.

Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly overvalued by others.

Sincerity has to do with the connect between our words and thoughts, and not between our belief and actions.

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel

Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.

Silence is the one great art of conversation.

Ignorance alone makes monsters or bug-bears; our actual acquaintances are all very common-place people.

We may be willing to tell a story twice but we are never willing to hear it more than once

We may, with instruction and opportunity mend our manners, or else alter for the worse, -- as the flesh and fortune shall serve; but the character, the internal, original bias, remains always the same, true to itself to the very last.

He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves

He talked on for ever; and you wished him to talk on for ever.

He that doth lend doth lose a friend.

He who undervalues himself is justly overvalued by others.

His works (taken together) are almost like a new edition of human nature.

His worst is better than any other person's best.

His sayings are generally like women's letters; all the pith is in the postscript

There is no force but argument in the case, and it is reason, not the will of another, that gives the law.

Surely, nothing is more simple than Time. His march is straightforward; but we should have leisure allowed us to look back upon the distance we have come, and not be counting his steps every moment.

It is great to shake off the trammels of the world and of public opinion . . . and become the creature of the moment . . . known by no other title than The Gentleman in the Parlour!

It is not the errors of others, but our own miscalculations, on which we wreak our lasting vengeance. It is ourselves that we cannot forgive.

Those who cannot miss an opportunity of saying a good thing . . . are not to be trusted with the management of any great question.

Those who from a constant change and dissipation of outward objects have not a moment's leisure left for their own thoughts, can feel no respect for themselves, and learn little consideration for humanity.

To great evils we submit; we resent little provocations

The are of will-making chiefly consists in baffling the importunity of expectation.

The accomplishments of the body are obvious and clear to all: those of the mind are recondite and doubtful, and therefore grudgingly acknowledged, or held up as the sport of prejudice, spite, and folly.

That which any one has been long learning unwillingly, he unlearns with proportional eagerness and haste.

We never do anything well until we cease to think about the manner of doing it

We do not die wholly at our deaths: we have moldered away gradually long before.

Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.

There are persons who cannot make friends. Who are they? Those who cannot be friends. It is not the want of understanding or good nature, of entertaining or useful qualities, that you complain of: on the contrary, they have probably many points of attraction; but they have one that neutralizes all these --they care nothing about you, and are neither the better nor worse for what you think of them. They manifest no joy at your approach; and when you leave them, it is with a feeling that they can do just as well without you. This is not sullenness, nor indifference, nor absence of mind; but they are intent solely on their own thoughts, and you are merely one of the subjects they exercise them upon. They live in society as in a solitude.

We affect to laugh at the folly of those who put faith in nostrums, but are willing to try ourselves whether there is any truth in them.

When a person dies who does any one thing better than anyone else in the world, which so many others are trying to do well, it leaves a gap in society.

Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well to absent themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recall them; but we can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home!

Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes the edge off admiration

We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves, and have neither thoughts nor feelings to impart to them. Give a man a topic in his head, a throb of pleasure in his heart, and he will be glad to share it with the first person he meets.

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

Words are the only things that last forever

There is no more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself.

What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind -- to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip for our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten! How different from the common art of self-tormenting!

We grow tired of ourselves, much more of other people. Use may in part reconcile us to our own tediousness, but we do not adopt that of others on the same paternal principle. We may be willing to sell a story twice, never to hear one more than once.

Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for -- they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood?

When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener the better) I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated.

I should like to spend the whole of my life in traveling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home.

The world has been doing little else but playing at make-believe all its lifetime.

What a sight for sore eyes that would be!

Those who have the largest hearts, have the soundest understandings; and he is the truest philosopher who can forget himself.

There is nothing good to be had in the country, or, if there be, they will not let you have it

There is nothing more likely to drive a person mad than . . . an obstinate, constitutional preference of the truth to the agreeable.

There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself.

Some persons make promises for the pleasure of breaking them.

A man must make his choice not only between virtue and vice, but between different virtues.

A man's look is the work of years; it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.

The power rests with the multitude, but let them beware how the exercise of it turns against their own rights! It is not the idol but the worshippers that are to be dreaded, and who, by degrading one of their fellows, render themselves liable to be branded with the same indignities.

Women have often more of what is called good sense then men. They have fewer pretensions; are less implicated in theories; and judge of objects more from their immediate and involuntary impression on the mind, and, therefore, more truly and naturally.

We as often repent the good we have done as the ill.

The way to secure success, is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it; the surest hindrance to it is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the discernment of the public.

I like a friend better for having faults that one can talk about.

If we use no ceremony toward 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.

The ballot is only useful as a screen from arbitrary power.

The best way to procure insults is to submit to them.

No truly great man ever thought himself so.

A person may be indebted for a nose or an eye, for a graceful carriage or a voluble discourse, to a great-aunt or uncle, whose existence he has scarcely heard of.

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.

At the outset of life . . . our imagination has a body to it.

The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires constantly to be wound up

The Irish are hearty, the Scotch plausible, the French polite, the Germans good-natured, the Italians courtly, the Spaniards reserved and decorous - the English alone seem to exist in taking and giving offense

If you think you can win, you can. Faith is necessary to victory.

He stood bewildered, not appalled, on that dark shore which separates the ancient and the modern world. . . . He is power, passion, self-will personified.

Honesty is one part eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves.

Genius, like humanity, rusts for the want of use