Quotes from William Hazlitt

The only vice that can not be forgiven is hypocrisy.

There is nothing more likely to drive a person mad than...an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.

Those who can command themselves command others.

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

To impress the idea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it.

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

We often choose a friend as we do a mistress -- for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.

Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.

Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, which never surfeits. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust. Hatred alone is immortal.

Learning is its own exceeding great reward.

We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

Modern fanaticism thrives in proportion to the quanitity of contradictions and nonsense it poures down the throats of the gaping multitude, and the jargon and mysticism it offers to their wonder and credulity.

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.

No truly great person ever thought themselves so.

the old maxim... "there are three things necessary to success in life--Impudence! Impudence! Impudence!

Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity.

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

He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves.

Reading is perhaps the greatest pleasure you will have in life; the one you will think of longest, and repent of least.

The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.

We hate old friends: we hate old books: we hate old opinions; and at last we come to hate ourselves.

Any one may mouth out a passage with theatrical cadence or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts. But to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task.

The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman is this: The one thinks everything right that is French, while the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.