Quotes from William Hazlitt

have I not the reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.

The seat of knowledge is in the head; of wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong, if we do not feel right.

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

We cannot read the same works forever. Our honey-moon, even though we wed the Muse, must come to an end; and it is followed by indifference, if not by disgust.

Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner -- and then to thinking!

Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.

The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.

Rules and models destroy genius and art.

Shall I faint, now that I have poured out the spirit of my mind to the world, and treated many subjects with truth, with freedom, with power, because I have been followed with one cry of abuse ever since for not being a Government tool?

If we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning we may only study his commentators. ["On the Ignorance of the Learned"]

Words are the only things that last forever; they are more durable than the eternal hills

Even a highwayman, in the way of trade, may blow out your brains, but if he uses foul language at the same time, I should say he was no gentleman.

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

Half the business of modern education is taken up in learning not to be ignorant; a process peculiarly unfavorable both to strength of mind and pregnancy of imagination...

I bear the creature no ill-will, but still I hate the very sight of it.

Never so sure our rapture to create As when it touch'd the brink of all we hate.

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

Persons without education certainly do not want [lack] either acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns themselves, or in things immediately within their observation; but they have no power of abstraction--they see their objects always near, never in the horizon.

Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.

Grace is rhwe absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incogruity.

There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our friends. 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.

I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.

The world has been doing little else but playing at make-believe all its lifetime.