809 Quotes by William Hazlitt

When one can do better than everyone else in the same walk, one does not make any very painful exertions to outdo oneself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.

Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.

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.

A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill, which are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or trophy of themselves without them

Never anticipate evils; or, because you cannot have things exactly as you wish, make them out worse than they are, through mere spite and willfulness.

Well I've had a happy life.

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey; but I like to go by myself.

Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both.

We prefer a person with vivacity and high spirits, though bordering upon insolence, to the timid and pusillanimous; we are fonder of wit joined to malice than of dullness without it.