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
The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desires of the soul, and of which it never tires.
—William Hazlitt
There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Friendship
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: Acceptance, Realization, Awareness
A man’s reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof. The throwing out of malicious imputations against any character leaves a stain, which no after-refutation can wipe out. To create an unfavourable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said. The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Reputation
Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Confidence
Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Cynicism
Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Thought, Simplicity, Time Management
A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Language
We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understanding and our hearts.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Nature
Zeal will do more than knowledge.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Knowledge, Enthusiasm
Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Gratitude, Blessings, Appreciation
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
We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Performance, Effort
Those who can command themselves command others.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Leadership, Leaders, Self-Control
The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. We cannot force love.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Love
Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Action, Occupation, Happiness
The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desires of the soul, and of which it never tires.
—William Hazlitt
Silence is one great art of conversation.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Conversation
Argument, again, is the death of conversation, if carried on in a spirit of hostility.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Argument, One liners
Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Acceptance, Realization, Awareness
There is room enough in human life to crowd almost every art and science in it. If we pass “no day without a line”—visit no place without the company of a book—we may with ease fill libraries, or empty them of their contents. The more we do, the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Positive Attitudes, Mindsets, Leisure, Optimism, Action
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: Self-Knowledge, Greatness
It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow pleasures.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Adversity
There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.
—William Hazlitt
Topics: Integrity
An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.
—William Hazlitt
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