Book detail: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated) is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This illustrated volume includes a selection of essays, reviews, and literary criticism by the 19th-century English writer William Hazlitt. The collection showcases his wit, insight, and influence on English literature.
The quotes below use the same card format as the rest of the site, including topics, source notes, copy actions, image creation, and sharing controls.
Read more
“Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“We learn to curb our will and keep our overt actions within the bounds of humanity, long before we can subdue our sentiments and imaginations to the same mild tone.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“We must be doing something to be happy.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Nothing precludes sympathy so much as a perfect indifference to it”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may, he will only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Malice often takes the garb of truth.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“The love of fame is almost 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.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Nothing is more unjust or capricious than public opinion.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Learning is its own exceeding great reward.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“We are not hypocrites in our sleep.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Familiarity confounds all traits of distinction; interest and prejudice take away the power of judging.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“We uniformly applaud what is right and condemn what is wrong, when it costs us nothing but the sentiment.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“No really great man ever thought himself so.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“We prefer ourselves to others, only because we a have more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person's.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“A woman's vanity is interested in making the object of her choice the god of her idolatry.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“No man can thoroughly master more than one art or science.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Our notions with respect to the importance of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery. The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but of our passions.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth... I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“It is well there is no one without fault; for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to s different species.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The learned are mere literary drudges.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“I am then never less alone than when alone”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Hope is the best possession.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey; 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.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“Silence is one great art of conversation.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)