809 Quotes by William Hazlitt

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.

The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science is the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.

Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.

Lying is the strongest acknowledgement of the force of truth.

There cannot be a surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel.

Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.

The way to secure success, is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it; the surest hindrance to it is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the discernment of the public.

Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.

A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof.