809 Quotes by William Hazlitt

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.

Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity.

We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.

Persons without education certainly do not want either acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns themselves, or in things immediately within their observation; but they have no power of abstraction, no general standard of taste, or scale of opinion. They see their objects always near, and never in the horizon. Hence arises that egotism which has been remarked as the characteristic of self-taught men.

There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.

Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere.

If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.

No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.

If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.