Quotes from William Hazlitt

I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me besides what interferes with my own ease and interest. I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many enemies and few friends; for the public know nothing of well-wishers, and keep a wary eye on those who would reform them.

Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.

The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud .

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?

The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.

We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.

Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant satisfaction to the thought. This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic.

All that is worth remembering in life, is the poetry of it

Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.

He who does nothing renders himself incapable of doing any thing; but while we are executing any work, we are preparing and qualifying ourselves to undertake another.

Gracefulness has been defined to be the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.

Of all eloquence a nickname is the most concise; of all arguments the most unanswerable.

The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.

Dandyism is a variety of genius.

When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.

If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.

Grace in women has more effect than beauty.

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.

Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.

Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.

I have a much greater ambition to be the best racket player than the best prose writer.

Who likes not his business, his business likes not him.

They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.

Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.