Quotes from William Hazlitt

The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors.

There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.

Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.

The humblest painter is a true scholar and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.

The incentive to ambition is the love of power.

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

It is not fit that every man should travel it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

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

I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me.

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

Zeal will do more than knowledge.

It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow pleasures.

No young man ever thinks he shall die.

Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.

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

If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.

He who lives wisely to himself and to his own heart looks at the busy world through the loop-holes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray.

There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. 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 are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.

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

Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.

The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.

The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.