William Hazlitt

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

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.

Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust; hatred alone is immortal.

The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.

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

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

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

We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.

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.

I'm not smart, but I like to observe. Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.

Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.

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!

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

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

We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.

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

The seat of knowledge is in the head; of wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong, if we do not feel right.

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.

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

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.

The more we do, the more we can do.

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.

If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.

If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.

There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.

We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.

The busier we are the more leisure we have.