You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Humankind, Action
To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Memory
Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Thoughts, Action, One liners, Thought
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, Endurance, Resolve, Difficulty, Energy
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
Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Friendship
Poverty, labor, and calamity are not without their luxuries, which the rich, the indolent, and the fortunate in vain seek for.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Poverty
Comedy naturally wears itself out—destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Comedy
We talk little when we do not talk about ourselves.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Speakers
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.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Goodness
There is no flattery so adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Flattery
Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Ability
He who comes up to his own idea of greatness, must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Greatness, Self-Knowledge
A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Mind
No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Prejudice
First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not infrequently) to our cost, when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or studied actions. 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.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Appearance
We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
—William Hazlitt
The most learned are often the most narrow-minded men.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Prejudice, Learning, Open-mindedness
Gallantry to women—the sure road to their favor—is nothing but the appearance of extreme devotion to all their wants and wishes, a delight in their satisfaction, and a confidence in yourself as being able to contribute toward it.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Courage, Bravery
It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed every one is at a play. We uniformly applaud what is right, and condemn what is wrong, when it costs us nothing but the sentiment.
—William Hazlitt
Man is a make-believe animal—he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Integrity
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
Topics: Politicians, Politics
Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Custom, Perspective
It is well there is no one without fault; for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to a different species.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Faults, Mistakes, Friendship
The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.
—William Hazlitt
I do not think that what is called Love at first sight is so great an absurdity as it is sometimes imagined to be. We generally make up our minds beforehand to the sort of person we should like, grave or gay, black, brown, or fair; with golden tresses or raven locks;—and when we meet with a complete example of the qualities we admire, the bargain is soon struck.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Love
Affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Affectation
Of all virtues magnanimity is the rarest; there are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Generosity
There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our friends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please—that is, as they please or displease us.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Friendship
Zeal will do more than knowledge.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Knowledge, Enthusiasm
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Arthur Helps British Essayist, Historian
- A. C. Benson English Essayist
- Joseph Addison English Poet, Playwright, Politician
- Thomas de Quincey English Essayist, Critic
- Samuel Johnson British Essayist
- Edwin Percy Whipple American Literary Critic
- John Dryden English Poet
- Giacomo Leopardi Italian Poet
- Miguel de Unamuno Spanish Philosopher, Writer
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge English Poet
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