Quotes from William Hazlitt

Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves.

Mankind are a herd of knaves and fools. It is necessary to join the crowd, or get out of their way, in order not to be trampled to death by them.

Death puts an end to rivalship and competition. The dead can boast no advantage over us, nor can we triumph over them.

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.

To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.

To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.

It is not the errors of others, but our own miscalculations, on which we wreak our lasting vengeance. It is ourselves that we cannot forgive.

There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.

The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.

Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.

Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.

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

Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.

...greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into itself.

No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness.

A King (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.

The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne from a sort of dignity belonging to them.

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.

I am proud up to the point of equality; everything above or below that appears to me arrant impertinence or abject meanness.

One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.

Experience makes us wise.

One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole or ace, than if one has never had a chance of winning it.

To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.

The fear of approaching death, which in youth we imagine must cause inquietude to the aged, is very seldom the source of much uneasiness.