William Hazlitt

Our first of poets was one of our first of men. He was an eminent instance to prove that a poet is not another name for the slave of power and fashion ... who merely aspire to make up the pageant and show of the day. There are persons in common life who ... can so little bear to be left for any length of time out of the grand carnival and masquerade of pride and folly, that they will gain admittance to it at the expense of their characters ... Milton was not one of these. He had lofty contemplative principle, and consciousness of inward power and worth, [not] to be tempted by such idle baits.

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

The love of fame, as it enters at times into his mind, is only another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority — that of time.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.

To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead.

It is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people mistake a familiar for a vulgar style, and suppose that to write without affectation is to write at random. On the contrary, there is nothing that requires more precision, and, if I may so say, purity of expression, than the style I am speaking of. It utterly rejects not only all unmeaning pomp, but all low, cant phrases, and loose, unconnected, slipshod allusions. It is not to take the first word that offers, but the best word in common use; it is not to throw words together in any combinations we please, but to follow and avail ourselves of the true idiom of the language. To write a genuine familiar or truly English style, is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes... It is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express: it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it, out of eight or ten words equally common, equally intelligible, with nearly equal pretensions, it is a matter of some nicety and discrimination to pick out the very one the preferableness of which is scarcely perceptible, but decisive.

If Samuel Johnson was the more deliberate aphorist, Hazlitt was the more self-conscious literary architect. You quote lines from Johnson; you want to recite entire passages from Hazlitt.

Indeed some degree of affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body; we must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern — why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?

I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home.

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

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

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

The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of dead men.

Again, there is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have also their altars and their religion.

But there is an unseemly exposure of the mind, as well as of the body.

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.

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

I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began.

We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.