A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles.
William Hazlitt

A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage.
William Hazlitt

A hair in the head is worth two in the brush.
William Hazlitt

A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.
William Hazlitt

A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.
William Hazlitt

A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.
William Hazlitt

A wise traveler never despises his own country.
William Hazlitt

Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.
William Hazlitt

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

Anyone who has passed though 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.
William Hazlitt


As is our confidence, so is our capacity.
William Hazlitt

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.
William Hazlitt

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

Dandyism is a variety of genius.
William Hazlitt

Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.
William Hazlitt

Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
William Hazlitt

Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.
William Hazlitt

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.
William Hazlitt

Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others!
William Hazlitt

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