William Hazlitt

To be remembered after we are dead, is but a poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.

— William Hazlitt

This Journal, then, is a depository for every species of political sophistry and personal calumny. There is no abuse or corruption that does not there find a jesuitical palliation or a bare-faced vindication. There we meet the slime of hypocrisy, the varnish of courts, the cant of pedantry, the cobwebs of the law, the iron hand of power. Its object is as mischievous as the means by which it is pursued are odious.

— William Hazlitt

One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so; for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed.

— William Hazlitt

The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.

— William Hazlitt

The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.

— William Hazlitt

For my own part, as I once said, I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.

— William Hazlitt

We grow tired of every thing but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.

— William Hazlitt

Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.

— 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

No really great man ever thought himself so.

— 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

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.

— William Hazlitt

He who comes up to his own idea of greatness, must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.

— William Hazlitt

Zeal will do more than knowledge.

— William Hazlitt

To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it…

— 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

The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favour.

— William Hazlitt

Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.

— William Hazlitt

Good temper is an estate for life…

— William Hazlitt

So have I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.

— William Hazlitt

Learning is its own exceeding great reward; and at the period of which we speak, it bore other fruits, not unworthy of it.

— William Hazlitt

The way to secure success, is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it; the surest hindrance to it is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the discernment of the public.

— William Hazlitt

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.

— William Hazlitt

We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.

— William Hazlitt

A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them.

— William Hazlitt

Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence, and see all things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and hope; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They have not been "hurt by the archers", nor has the iron entered their souls. The world has no hand on them.

— William Hazlitt

To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.

— William Hazlitt

Horus non numero nisi serenas—"I count only the hours that are serene"—is the motto of a sundial near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled.

— William Hazlitt

Gallantry to women (the sure road to their favor) is nothing but the appearance of extreme devotion to all their wants and wishes, a delight in their satisfaction, and a confidence in yourself as being able to contribute toward it.

— William Hazlitt

But there is an unseemly exposure of the mind, as well as of the body.

— William Hazlitt

Indeed some degree of affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body; we must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.

— William Hazlitt

We all wear some disguise — make some professions — use some artifice to set ourselves off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom, though we may endeavour to keep some others that we think less to our credit as much as possible in the background…

— William Hazlitt

The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be as constantly wound up.

— William Hazlitt

Again, there is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have also their altars and their religion.

— William Hazlitt

Grace in women has more effect than beauty.

— William Hazlitt

Prejudice is the child of ignorance…

— William Hazlitt

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.

— William Hazlitt

Defoe says, that there were a hundred thousand stout 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

Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life.

— William Hazlitt

A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man.

— William Hazlitt

But fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism: it is haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath — tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.

— William Hazlitt

The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.

— William Hazlitt

The more we do, the more we can do.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— 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

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

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

— William Hazlitt

If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.

— 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

The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.

— William Hazlitt

Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.

— 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

Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the colour in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty, and your animal spirits, and you will pass for a fine man.

— William Hazlitt

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began.

— William Hazlitt

Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols — it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.

— William Hazlitt

Man is a make-believe animal — he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.

— William Hazlitt

If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power, for you necessarily feel some towards him; and since he will take no denial, you must comply with his peremptory demands, or send for a constable, which out of respect for his character you will not do.

— William Hazlitt

Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for — they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood?

— William Hazlitt

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

The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness, than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings.

— William Hazlitt

The origin of all science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.

— William Hazlitt

When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

Well, I've had a happy life.

— William Hazlitt

General principles are not the less true or important because, from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it, or like that secret influence which binds the world together and holds the planets in their orbits.

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

— William Hazlitt

They are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream; a studied madness.

— William Hazlitt

Grace has been defined the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.

— William Hazlitt

Grace in women has more effect than beauty.

— William Hazlitt

Grace is the absence of every thing that indicates pain or difficulty, or hesitation or incongruity.

— William Hazlitt

All that is worth remembering in life, is the poetry of it.

— William Hazlitt

Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself; that is impatient of all limit; that (as flame bends to flame) strives to link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur; to enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest manner, and by the most striking examples of the same quality in other instances.

— William Hazlitt

The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakespeare, every thing.

— William Hazlitt

The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of dead men.

— William Hazlitt

He talked on for ever; and you wished him to talk on for ever.

— William Hazlitt

The love of fame, as it enters at times into his mind, is only another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority — that of time.

— William Hazlitt

The Tory is one who is governed by sense and habit alone. He considers not what is possible, but what is real; he gives might the preference over right. He cries long life to the conqueror, and is ever strong upon the stronger side — the side of corruption and prerogative.

— William Hazlitt

Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.

— William Hazlitt

It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.

— William Hazlitt

We are all of us more or less the slaves of opinion.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

— William Hazlitt

Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety.

— William Hazlitt

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

— William Hazlitt

Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.

— William Hazlitt

Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference.

— William Hazlitt

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy.

— William Hazlitt

First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.

— William Hazlitt

Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.

— William Hazlitt

Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.

— William Hazlitt

One has no notion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist; his style stuns readers...He is too much for any single newspaper antagonist; "lays waste" a city orator or Member of Parliament, and bears hard upon the government itself. He is kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country.

— William Hazlitt

He changes his opinions as he does his friends, and much on the same account. He has no comfort in fixed principles; as soon as anything is settled in his own mind, he quarrels with it. He has no satisfaction but the chase after truth, runs a question down, worries and kills it, then quits it like a vermin, and starts some new game, to lead him a new dance, and give him a fresh breathing through bog and brake, with the rabble yelping at his heels and the leaders perpetually at fault.

— William Hazlitt

The more we do, the more we can do.

— William Hazlitt

Any one who has passed through 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

Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.

— William Hazlitt

Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge.

— William Hazlitt

The thing is plain. All that men really understand is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know and motives to study or practise. The rest is affectation and imposture.

— William Hazlitt

The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.

— William Hazlitt

It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.

— 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

Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) — neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

What I mean by living to one's-self is living in the world, as in it, not of it: it is as if no one know there was such a person, and you wished no one to know it: it is to be a silent spectator of the mighty scene of things, not an object of attention or curiosity in it; to take a thoughtful, anxious interest in what is passing in the world, but not to feel the slightest inclination to make or meddle with it.

— 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

There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself.

— William Hazlitt

When a man is dead, they put money in his coffin, erect monuments to his memory, and celebrate the anniversary of his birthday in set speeches. Would they take any notice of him if he were living? No!

— William Hazlitt

Thought depends on the habitual exercise of the speculative faculties; action, on the determination of the will. The one assigns reasons for things, the other puts causes into act. … Such is the effeminacy of the speculative and philosophical temperament, compared with the promptness and vigour of the practical! … Reasoners in general are undecided, wavering, and sceptical, or yield at last to the weakest motive as most congenial to their feeble habit of soul.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

The great requisite … for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination.

— William Hazlitt

It [will-making] is the latest opportunity we have of exercising the natural perversity of the disposition … This last act of our lives seldom belies the former tenor of them for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so (in settling accounts with those who are so unmannerly as to survive us) as to do as little good, and to plague and disappoint as many people, as possible.

— William Hazlitt

His hypothesis goes to this — to make the common run of his readers fancy they can do all that can be done by genius, and to make the man of genius believe he can only do what is to be done by mechanical rules and systematic industry. This is not a very feasible scheme; nor is Sir Joshua sufficiently clear and explicit in his reasoning in support of it.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I like to do it myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone.

— William Hazlitt

I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.

— William Hazlitt

If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.

— William Hazlitt

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.

— William Hazlitt

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! … I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.

— William Hazlitt

I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home.

— 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

The last sort I shall mention are verbal critics — mere word-catchers, fellows that pick out a word in a sentence and a sentence in a volume, and tell you it is wrong. The title of Ultra-Crepidarian critics has been given to a variety of this species.

— William Hazlitt

Very trifling circumstances do give great and daily annoyance, and as often prove too much for our philosophy and forbearance, as matters of the highest moment. … The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear great ones as well as we can … To great evils we submit; we resent little provocations.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own, and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image of itself. Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant objects please because they border on its confines and are moulded by its touch.

— William Hazlitt

There is (so to speak) "a mighty stream of tendency" to good in the human mind, upon which all objects float and are imperceptibly borne along; and though in the voyage of life we meet with strong rebuffs, with rocks and quicksands, yet there is a "a tide in the affairs of men," a heaving and a restless aspiration of the soul, by means of which, "with sails and tackle torn," the wreck and scattered fragments of our entire being drift into the port and haven of our desires!

— William Hazlitt

We can scarcely hate any one that we know.

— William Hazlitt

In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide from feeling, and not from reason … If we were obliged to enter into a theoretical deliberation on every occasion before we act, life would be at a stand, and Art would be impracticable.

— William Hazlitt

The objects that we have known in better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our affections, and give us strength to await our future lot. The future is like a dead wall or a thick mist hiding all objects from our view; the past is alive and stirring with objects, bright or solemn, and of unfading interest.

— William Hazlitt

I think it is a rule that men in business should not be taught other things. Any one will be almost sure to make money who has no other idea in his head. A college education, or intense study of abstract truth, will not enable a man to drive a bargain … The best politicians are not those who are deeply grounded in mathematical or in ethical science. Rules stand in the way of expediency. Many a man has been hindered from pushing his fortune in the world by an early cultivation of his moral sense.

— William Hazlitt

Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.

— William Hazlitt

No young man believes he shall ever die.

— William Hazlitt

There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amends for everything. To be young is to be as one of the Immortals.

— William Hazlitt

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?

— William Hazlitt

The art of will-making chiefly consists in baffling the importunity of expectation.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

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

— William Hazlitt

Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.

— William Hazlitt

Zeal will do more than knowledge.

— William Hazlitt

The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.

— William Hazlitt

There are names written in her immortal scroll, at which FAME blushes!

— 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

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.

— William Hazlitt

It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

The public have neither shame or gratitude.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

As is our confidence, so is our capacity.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

The truly proud man knows neither superiors nor inferiors. The first he does not admit of: the last he does not concern himself about.

— William Hazlitt

No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.

— William Hazlitt

Unlimited power is helpless, as arbitrary power is capricious. Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We can attempt nothing great, but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter: we can persevere in nothing great, but from a pride in overcoming them.

— William Hazlitt

One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

To a superior race of beings the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem equally ridiculous.

— William Hazlitt

The only vice which cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.

— William Hazlitt

If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

The most learned are often the most narrow-minded men.

— William Hazlitt

The true barbarian is he who thinks every thing barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

Those only deserve a monument who do not need one; that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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, who drink of that flood of glory as of a river, and refresh our wings in it for future flight.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt

Those who can command themselves, command others.

— William Hazlitt

Some persons make promises for the pleasure of breaking them.

— William Hazlitt

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

— William Hazlitt