William Hazlitt Quotes
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Affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body.
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The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.
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Political truth is libel; religious truth, blasphemy.
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The look of a gentleman is little else than the reflection of the looks of the world.
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If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will -the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.
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A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them.
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A man who does not endeavour to seem more than he is will generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention to fashion is necessary.
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A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death.
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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.
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The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.
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Common sense, to most people, is nothing more than their own opinions.
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Persons without education certainly do not want either acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns themselves, or in things immediately within their observation; but they have no power of abstraction, no general standard of taste, or scale of opinion. They see their objects always near, and never in the horizon. Hence arises that egotism which has been remarked as the characteristic of self-taught men.
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Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.
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There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!
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Asleep, nobody is a hypocrite
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The assumption of merit is easier, less embarrassing, and more effectual than the actual attainment of it.
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True modesty and true pride are much the same thing: both consist in setting a just value on ourselves - neither more nor less.
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If we are long absent from our friends, we forget them; if we are constantly with them, we despise them.
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Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) - neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.
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The way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it.
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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.
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He who lives wisely to himself and his own heart looks at the busy world through the loopholes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray.
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People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking.
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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.