William Hazlitt (1778–1830) was an English writer, essayist, philosopher, and critic. Celebrated for his brilliant prose style, Hazlitt is one of the English language’s most outstanding and prolific authors—his remarkable essays fill 20 volumes.
Born in Maidstone, England, Hazlitt initially became a painter portrait and became a journalist and essayist for The Morning Chronicle and The Examiner. He wrote about art and sports, drama, politics, and reviewed books. He was an innovator in the development of the personal essay—the essay written in the first person, which is more discursive and is free to wander away from the central theme.
Hazlitt is considered one of the greatest exponents of the personal essay—written in the first person and often digressing from subject to subject. He was also one of the foremost critics of the early 19th century’s Romantic period and made original contributions to the appreciation of art, theatre, literature, and philosophy.
He was friends with Charles and Mary Lamb, Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, John Keats, and other luminaries now part of the 19th-century literary canon. Hazlitt died of stomach cancer in a London inn, penniless and uncelebrated.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by William Hazlitt
Few people make much noise after their deaths who did not do so while living.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Fame
Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Wit, Humor
Cant is the voluntary over charging or prolongation of a real sentiment; hypocrisy is the setting up pretence to a feeling you never had, and have no wish for.
—William Hazlitt
Actors are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream; and the height of their ambition is to be beside themselves. They wear the livery of other men’s fortunes: their very thoughts are not their own.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Acting, Actors
No man is truly great who is great only in his own lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Greatness, Greatness & Great Things, Posterity
The essence of poetry is will and passion.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Poetry
We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Opinions, Appreciation, Bravery, Courage, Observation
I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Water
We are more jealous of frivolous accomplishments with brilliant success, than of the most estimable qualities without. Johnson envied Garrick whom he despised, and ridiculed Goldsmith, whom he loved.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Jealousy
An accomplished coquette excites the passions of others, in proportion as she feels none herself.
—William Hazlitt
Cowardice is not synonymous with prudence.—It often happens that the better part of discretion is valor.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Cowardice
There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Criminals, Crime
When I am in the country I wish to vegetate like the country.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Country
The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously; and those who have produced immortal works, have done so without knowing how or why. The greatest power operates unseen.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Genius
The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Power
Fashon is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism: it is haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath—tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Fashion
Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Aspirations, Hope
Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry; it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Talent
The soul of dispatch is decision.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Decisions
The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Friendship
A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Vulgarity, Swearing, Profanity
A knave thinks himself a fool all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.
—William Hazlitt
Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Honesty, Eloquence
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
Topics: Nature
Women have more good sense than men. They have fewer pretensions, are less implicated in theories, and judge of objects more from their immediate and involuntary impressions on the mind, and therefore more truly and naturally.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Woman
I would like to spend my whole life traveling, if I could borrow another life to spend at home.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Tourism, Travel
When I take up a book I have read before I know what to expect; and the satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated, I shake hands with and look the old tried and valued friend in the face, compare notes, and chat the hour away.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Reading
Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Gratitude, Blessings, Appreciation
To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Friendship
Life is the art of being well deceived.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Deception, Deception/Lying
Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Thought, Simplicity, Value of a Day, Time Management
Anyone who has passed through 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
Topics: Education
To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Reason
Let a man’s talents or virtues be what they may, he will only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Realization, Acceptance, Awareness
Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter; we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Perseverance, Energy, Difficulty, Resolve, Endurance
We are all of us, more or less, the slaves of opinion.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Help, Opinion, Cooperation
Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Nature, Carpe-diem, Death
A coquette is one that is never to be persuaded out of the passion she has to please, nor out of a good opinion of her own beauty.—Time and years she regards as things that wrinkle and decay only other women; forgets that age is written in the face; and that the same dress which became her when young, now only makes her look the older.—Affectation cleaves to her even in sickness and pain, and she dies in a high head and colored ribbons.
—William Hazlitt
No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Self-Discovery, Being Ourselves
People addicted to secrecy are so without knowing why; they are not so for cause, but for secrecy’s sake.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Secrecy
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