Will Hazlitt Quotes

The more you do, the more you can do.

You will hear more good things on the outside of a stagecoach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university.

Reflection makes men cowards.

Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.

There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.

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

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

We grow tired of ourselves, much more of other people.

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

Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.

Inflation makes the extension of socialism possible by providing the financial chaos in which it flourishes. The fact is that socialism and inflation are cause and effect, they feed on each other!

No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.

There is no more certain way to deter employment than to harass and penalize employers.

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.

Poverty is the test of civility and the touchstone of friendship.

Political truth is libel; religious truth, blasphemy.

It is only those who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to blood invariably on abstract ideas, that ever feel ennui.

One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole or ace, than if one has never had a chance of winning it.

Common sense, to most people, is nothing more than their own opinions.

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

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.

Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore.

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

He who would see old Hoghton right Must view it by the pale moonlight.

Liberty is the essential basis, the sine qua non, of morality.

Government can't give us anything without depriving us of something else.

Inflation is a form of tax, a tax that we all collectively must pay.

Malice often takes the garb of truth.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves.

No truly great person ever thought themselves so.

The way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it.

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.

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

Landscape painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy.

Zeal will do more than knowledge.

A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn.

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.

We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.

The real solution to the problem of poverty consists in finding how to increase the employment and earning power of the poor.

The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.

The multitude who require to be led, still hate their leaders.

As is our confidence, so is our capacity.

Do not quarrel with the world too soon; for, bad as it may be, it is the best we have to live in, here. If railing would have made it better, it would have been reformed long ago.

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

Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others.