The discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetness and cement of friendship. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Grace in women has more effect than beauty. We sometimes see a certain fine self-possession, an habitual voluptuousness of character, which reposes… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit -- or a mask. . . . The foregoing maxim shows the difference between truth and sarcasm. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Envy is the deformed and distorted offspring of egotism; and when we reflect on the strange and disproportioned character of the parent,… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Kings ought never to be seen upon the stage. In the abstract, they are very disagreeable characters: it is only while living… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
A taste for liberal art is necessary to complete the character of a gentleman, Science alone is hard and mechanical. It exercises… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
A full-dressed ecclesiastic is a sort of go-cart of divinity; an ethical automaton. A clerical prig is, in general, a very dangerous… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
In love we do not think of moral qualities, and scarcely of intellectual ones. Temperament and manner alone, with beauty, excite love. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
There is some virtue in almost every vice, except hypocrisy; and even that, while it is a mockery of virtue, is at… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
“Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
The fear of punishment may be necessary to the suppression of vice; but it also suspends the finer motives of virtue. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Anyone must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited who expects everything to conform… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not infrequently) to our cost, when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
We are thankful for good-will rather than for services, for the motive than the quantum of favor received. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
The discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetness and cement of friendship. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to our efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner doing it. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Those who have had none of the cares of this life to harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to the… — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect. — William Hazlitt Copy Share Image
