William Hazlitt

“I would like to spend the whole of my life traveling, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend at home.”

“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.”

“To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.”

“A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.”

“The more we do, the more we can do.”

“The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.”

“the old maxim... "there are three things necessary to success in life--Impudence! Impudence! Impudence!”

“The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.”

“Never so sure our rapture to createAs when it touch'd the brink of all we hate.”

“The path of genius is free, and its own”

“Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.”

“He understands the texture and meaning of the visible universe, and 'sees into the life of things,' not by the help of mechanical instruments, but of the improved exercise of his faculties, and an intimate sympathy with Nature. The meanest thing is not lost upon him, for he looks at it with an eye to itself, not merely to his own vanity or interest, or the opinion of the world. Even where there is neither beauty nor use—if that ever were—still there is truth, and a sufficient source of gratification in the indulgence of curiosity and activity of mind. The humblest printer is a true scholar; and the best of scholars - the scholar of Nature.”

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

“The public have neither shame or gratitude.”

“No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.”

“That which is not, shall never be; that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident.”

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

“To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.”

“Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.”

“Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic.”