809 Quotes by William Hazlitt

Envy is the deformed and distorted offspring of egotism; and when we reflect on the strange and disproportioned character of the parent, we cannot wonder at the perversity and waywardness of the child.

Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

A great man la an abstraction of some one excellence; but whoever fancies himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of excellence or defect of himself or others.

We are governed by sympathy; and the extent of our sympathy is determined by that of our sensibility

I should like to spend the whole of my life in traveling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home.

What passes in the world for talent or dexterity or enterprise is often only a want of moral principle. We may succeed where others fail, not from a greater share of invention, but from not being nice in the choice of expedients.

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

Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference.

Nothing precludes sympathy so much as a perfect indifference to it