William Hazlitt
Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.
To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.
The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.
Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.
If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.
I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.
Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.
The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.
Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.
A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage.
The public have neither shame or gratitude.
Those who can command themselves command others.
Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.
To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.
The most learned are often the most narrow minded.
A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.
To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.
The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.
There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.
We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
We must be doing something to be happy.
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.
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.
There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.
Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.
The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.Collection: Men
Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.Collection: Real
A nickname is the hardest stone that the devil can throw at a man.Collection: Men
Common sense, to most people, is nothing more than their own opinions.Collection: People
Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps.Collection: Men
We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.Collection: Positive Thinking
Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.Collection: Motivational
The Irish are hearty, the Scotch plausible, the French polite, the Germans good-natured, the Italians courtly, the Spaniards reserved and decorous - the English alone seem to exist in taking and giving offense.Collection: Country
There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary.Collection: Art
The expression of a gentleman's face is not so much that of refinement, as of flexibility, not of sensibility and enthusiasm as of indifference; it argues presence of mind rather than enlargement of ideas.Collection: Presence Of Mind
As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.Collection: Art
It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, anymore than they grow stronger or healthier or honest.Collection: Men
We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.Collection: Dream
He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan.Collection: Faithful
The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.Collection: Love
Those who have the largest hearts have the soundest understandings; and they are the truest philosophers who can forget themselves.Collection: Wisdom
He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery.Collection: Art
The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science is the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.Collection: Ignorance
There is no flattery so adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent.Collection: Flattery
Hope is the best possession.Collection: Hopeful
Power is pleasure; and pleasure sweetens pain.Collection: Pain
Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others, who feel that the world has done them justice.Collection: Justice
But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.Collection: Class