Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

William Hazlitt Writer

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: England
  • Born: Apr 10, 1778
  • Died: Sep 18, 1830

William Hazlitt was an English 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. He was also a painter. He 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, and William Wordsworth.

No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.

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

Prosperity is a great teacher adversity a greater.

People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.

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

Grace in women has more effect than beauty.

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.

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

Learning is its own exceeding great reward.

Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.

A wise traveler never despises his own country.

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

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

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

Zeal will do more than knowledge.

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.

Life is the art of being well deceived and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.

We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.

Rules and models destroy genius and art.

The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.

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

Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust hatred alone is immortal.

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

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

I would like to spend the whole of my life traveling, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend at home.

A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The incentive to ambition is the love of power.

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