William Hazlitt Quotes

• 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.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Friendship

  Tags in Punctuality, Intimacy

• Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Antiquity, Fame

• Everything is in motion. Everything flows. Everything is vibrating.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Flows, Vibrating, Action

• Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.

  William Hazlitt

  Tags in Morality, Morals, Exception

• Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others!

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Friendship, Life, Love, Trust, Wedding

  Tags in Security, Marriage

• Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Justice

  Tags in Envy, Ingredients, Jealousy

• Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Wrote, Rote, Read, Lazy

• 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.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Friendship

  Tags in Embalming

• Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Country, Death

  Tags in Bigotry, Time, Fight

• Dandyism is a variety of genius.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Genius

  Tags in Variety

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

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Defects, Cunning, Deception, Weakness

• Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Lay, Secrets, Book

• Anyone who has passed though the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Education

  Tags in Fool

• An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Injury, Vain

• Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.

  William Hazlitt

  Tags in Prejudices, Perversion

• A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Scholar, Language

• A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Nicknames, Stone, Devil

• A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Respect

  Tags in Hypocrisy, Despises

• A hair in the head is worth two in the brush.

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Worth, Appearance, Brush

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

  William Hazlitt

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Grave, Lively, Company

William Hazlitt (154)

Birth:	10th April, 1778
Death:	18th September, 1830
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Essayist, Painter, Philosopher, Writer

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