Quotes from William Hazlitt

We are governed by sympathy; and the extent of our sympathy is determined by that of our sensibility

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.

Human life may be regarded as a succession of frontispieces. The way to be satisfied is never to look back.

Well I've had a happy life.

The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life.

Those who have had none of the cares of this life to harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to the hopes and fears of the next to vary the prospect before them.

Reflection brakes men cowards. There is no object that can be put in competition with life, unless it is viewed through the medium of passion, and we are hurried away by the impulse of the moment.

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end.

The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading while we are young. I have had as much of this pleasure perhaps as any one.

A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.

A wise traveler never despises his own country.

That which is not, shall never be; that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident.

The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.

We are thankful for good-will rather than for services, for the motive than the quantum of favor received.

Horus non numero nisi serenas (I count only the sunny hours).

A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage.

If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.

A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.

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.

The worst old age is that of the mind.

To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.

A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.