Quotes by William Hazlitt

About William Hazlitt:

William Hazlitt is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is currently little read and mostly out of print. During his lifetime he befriended many people who are now part of the 19th-century literary canon, including Charles and Mary Lamb, Stendhal, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and John Keats.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.

William Hazlitt

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

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.

William Hazlitt

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

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

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

William Hazlitt

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

William Hazlitt

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

William Hazlitt

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.

William Hazlitt

Zeal will do more than knowledge.

William Hazlitt

Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.

William Hazlitt

Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.

William Hazlitt

The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.

William Hazlitt

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 study his commentators.

William Hazlitt

Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.

William Hazlitt

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

A wise traveler never despises his own country.

William Hazlitt

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

William Hazlitt

You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.

William Hazlitt

We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.

William Hazlitt

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

William Hazlitt

Author Bio

  • NameWilliam Hazlitt
  • DescriptionEnglish writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, as the greatest art critic of his age, and as a drama critic, social commentator, and philosopher
  • BornApril 10, 1778
  • DiedSeptember 18, 1830
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionLiterary Historian; Philosopher; Writer
  • WorksCharacters Of Shakespear's Plays; Table-Talk; The Spirit Of The Age