809 Quotes by William Hazlitt

A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.

The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.

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.

He who lives wisely to himself and his own heart looks at the busy world through the loopholes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray.

There is nothing more likely to drive a person mad than . . . an obstinate, constitutional preference of the truth to the agreeable.

We trifle with, make sport of, and despise those who are attached to us, and follow those that fly from us.

Genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength.

Abuse is an indirect species of homage.

Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity.