William Hazlitt

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

“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 best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud.”

“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.”

“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...”

“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.”

“Learning is its own exceeding great reward.”

“No truly great person ever thought themselves so.”

“Never so sure our rapture to createAs when it touch'd the brink of all we hate.”

“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?”

“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.”

“I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me besides what interferes with my own ease and interest. I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many enemies and few friends; for the public know nothing of well-wishers, and keep a wary eye on those who would reform them.”

“Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic.”

“The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.”

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

“The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.”

“As is our confidence, so is our capacity”

“In private life do we not see hypocrisy, servility, selfishness, folly, and impudence succeed, while modesty shrinks from the encounter, and merit is trodden under foot? How often is 'the rose plucked from the forehead of a virtuous love to plant a blister there!' What chance is there of the success of real passion? What certainty of its continuance? Seeing all this as I do, and unravelling the web of human life into its various threads of meanness, spite, cowardice, want of feeling, and want of understanding, of indifference towards others, and ignorance of ourselves, – seeing custom prevail over all excellence, itself giving way to infamy – mistaken as I have been in my public and private hopes, calculating others from myself, and calculating wrong; always disappointed where I placed most reliance; 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.”

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

“I'm not smart, but I like to observe.Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why,”

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

“The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.”

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

“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.”

“El hombre es el único animal que ríe y llora; porque él es el único que conoce la diferencia entre las cosas que son y las que debieran ser.”

“The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.”

“He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.”

“In some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates.”

“We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.”

“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.”

“The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.”

“A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.”

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

“The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.(1778 - 1830)”

“Love turns, with little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal.”

“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!”

“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.”

“We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.”

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

“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.”

“If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?”

“Thus, to give an obvious instance, if I have once enjoyed the cool shade of a tree, and been lulled into a deep repose by the sound of a brook running at its feet, I am sure that wherever I can find a tree and a brook, I can enjoy the same pleasure again. Hence, when I imagine these objects, I can easily form a mystic personification of the friendly power that inhabits them, Dryad or Naiad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting shade. Hence the origin of the Grecian mythology.”

“Prejudice is the child of ignorance.”

“Travel's greatest purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”

“Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own."[The Sick Chamber (The New Monthly Magazine , August 1830)]”

“I do not know any moral to be deduced from this view of the subject [of personal character], but one, namely, that we should mind our own business, cultivate our good qualities, if we have any, and irritate ourselves less about the absurdities of other people, which neither we nor they can help. I grant there is something in which I have said which I might be made to glance towards the doctrine of original sin, grace, election, reprobation, or the Gnostic Principle that acts did not determine the virtue or vice of the character; and in those doctrines, so far as they are deducible from what I have said, I agree -- but always with a salvo.”

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