Quotes from William Hazlitt

It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.

People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.

The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.

The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.

The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.

He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own. [ The Sick Chamber ( The New Monthly Magazine , August 1830)]

In some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates.

Love turns, with little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal.

We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.

The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. (1778 - 1830)

The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.

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.

Life is the art of being well-deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.

Travel's greatest purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

I'm not smart, but I like to observe. Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why

To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.

The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.

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.

Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.

A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.