809 Quotes by William Hazlitt

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

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?

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

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)]

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.

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

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.

Reading is perhaps the greatest pleasure you will have in life; the one you will think of longest, and repent of least.

The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.