Quotes by William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt

English writer

Lived from: 1778 - 1830

Category: Writers (Contemporary) Country: FlagUnited Kingdom

Born: 10 april 1778 Died: 18 september 1830

  • A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.
  • There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.
  • There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.
  • Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.
  • Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.
  • The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings.
  • The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science and imposture is the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
  • The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.
  • The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.
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Quotes 1 till 20 of 140.

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  • As is our confidence, so is our capacity.
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  • A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.
    ― William Hazlitt
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  • Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering the weaknesses of others.
    ― William Hazlitt
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  • No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
    ― William Hazlitt
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  • The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.
    ― William Hazlitt
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  • A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage.
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  • A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man.
    Source: Round table
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  • A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.
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  • A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.
    ― William Hazlitt
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  • 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.
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  • An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.
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  • 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
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  • 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?
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  • 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.
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  • Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.
    ― William Hazlitt
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  • Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.
    ― William Hazlitt
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  • Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others!
    ― William Hazlitt
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  • Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.
    ― William Hazlitt
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  • Every one in a crowd has the power to throw dirt; none out of ten have the inclination.
    ― William Hazlitt
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  • Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.
    ― William Hazlitt
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