William Hazlitt

"Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration."

"Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune."

"Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope; and few are reduced so low as that."

"Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope."

"The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues."

"There are names written in her immortal scroll, at which FAME blushes!"

"The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test; for it is on that on which our success in life depends."

"There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our friends. 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."

"It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world."

"Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love."

"The public have neither shame or gratitude."

"Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do."

"As is our confidence, so is our capacity."

"Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses."

"The truly proud man knows neither superiors nor inferiors. The first he does not admit of: the last he does not concern himself about."

"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."

"Unlimited power is helpless, as arbitrary power is capricious. Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We can attempt nothing great, but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter: we can persevere in nothing great, but from a pride in overcoming them."

"One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect."

"To a superior race of beings the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem equally ridiculous."

"The only vice which cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy."

"If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation."

"Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality."

"The most learned are often the most narrow-minded men."

"The true barbarian is he who thinks every thing barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices."

"We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts."

"A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one — they shew one another off to the best advantage."

"An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may."

"Those only deserve a monument who do not need one; that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men."

"Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity, who drink of that flood of glory as of a river, and refresh our wings in it for future flight."

"He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies."

"The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts."

"Those who can command themselves, command others."

"Some persons make promises for the pleasure of breaking them."

"Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labour in it, but they labour in it because they excel."

"To be remembered after we are dead, is but a poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living."

"This Journal, then, is a depository for every species of political sophistry and personal calumny. There is no abuse or corruption that does not there find a jesuitical palliation or a bare-faced vindication. There we meet the slime of hypocrisy, the varnish of courts, the cant of pedantry, the cobwebs of the law, the iron hand of power. Its object is as mischievous as the means by which it is pursued are odious."

"One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so; for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed."

"The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have."

"The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet."

"For my own part, as I once said, I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about."

"If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago."

"We grow tired of every thing but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects."

"Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use."

"No really great man ever thought himself so."

"Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks."

"He who comes up to his own idea of greatness, must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind."

"Zeal will do more than knowledge."

"To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it…"

"Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy."

"The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favour."