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William Hazlitt Quotes (1778-1830)
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About William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830) was an English writer remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism. He is sometimes esteemed the greatest English literary critic after Samuel Johnson.
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful William Hazlitt quotes.
“We are not hypocrites in our sleep.”
“As is our confidence, so is our capacity.”
“Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.”
“Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference.”
“Those who can command themselves, command others.”
“The most learned are often the most narrow-minded men.”
William Hazlitt Quotes by Topic
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William Hazlitt on Prejudice 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Prejudice →William Hazlitt on Grace 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on Grace →William Hazlitt on Greatness 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on Greatness →William Hazlitt on Envy 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on Envy →William Hazlitt on Shoemaking 2 quotes
“The title of Ultracrepidarian critics has been given to those persons who find fault with small and insignificant details.”
William Hazlitt on Capricious 2 quotes
“Lord Byron makes man after his own image, woman after his own heart; the one is a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding slave.”
William Hazlitt on Immortality
William Hazlitt on Confidence
“As is our confidence, so is our capacity.”
William Hazlitt on Genius
William Hazlitt on Wit
“Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.”
William Hazlitt on Poetry
“All that is worth remembering in life, is the poetry of it.”
What William Hazlitt Said About Others
Discover personal opinions William Hazlitt shared regarding contemporaries.
William Hazlitt on Laurence Sterne 3 quotes
“His wit is poignant, though artificial; and his characters (though the groundwork of some of them had been laid before) have yet invaluable original differences; and the spirit of the execution, the master-strokes constantly thrown into them, are not to be surpassed.”
William Hazlitt on James Thomson (poet, born 1700) 3 quotes
“Thomson is the best of our descriptive poets: for he gives most of the poetry of natural description. Others have been quite equal to him, or have surpassed him, as Cowper for instance, in the picturesque part of his art, in marking the peculiar features and curious details of objects;—no one has yet come up to him in giving the sum total of their effects, their varying influences on the mind.”
William Hazlitt on Lord Byron 2 quotes
“Lord Byron makes man after his own image, woman after his own heart; the one is a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding slave.”
William Hazlitt on The Faerie Queene 2 quotes
“Some people will say [...] that they cannot understand [the Faery Queen] on account of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if they thought it would bite them: they look at it as a child looks at a painted dragon, and think it will strangle them in its shining folds. This is very idle. If they do not meddle with the allegory, the allegory will not meddle with them. Without minding it at all, the whole is as plain as a pikestaff.”
William Hazlitt on Dag Hammarskjöld
William Hazlitt on William Shakespeare
“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.”
William Hazlitt on George Chapman
“Chapman, ... where he lays aside the gravity of the philosopher and poet, discovers an unexpected comic vein, distinguished by equal truth of nature and lively good humour.”
William Hazlitt on James Macpherson
“Ossian is the decay and old age of poetry. He lives only in the recollection and regret of the past. There is one impression which he conveys more entirely than all other poets, namely, the sense of privation, the loss of all things.”
William Hazlitt on Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“He was the first poet I ever knew. His genius at that time had angelic wings, and fed on manna. He talked on for ever; and you wished him to talk on for ever. His thoughts did not seem to come with labour and effort; but as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the wings of his imagination lifted him from off his feet.”
William Hazlitt on John Marston
“Marston is a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the ground of comedy, and whose forte was not sympathy, either with the stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself either in comic irony or in lofty invective. He was properly a satirist.”
William Hazlitt on Edmund Spenser
“His versification is at once the most smooth and the most sounding in the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds...that would cloy by their very sweetness, but that the ear is constantly relieved and enchanted by their continued variety of modulation. ... It is the perfection of melting harmony, dissolving the soul in pleasure or holding it captive in the chains of suspense.”
William Hazlitt on William Wordsworth
“He is in this sense the most original poet now living, and the one whose writings could the least be spared: for they have no substitute elsewhere. The vulgar do not read them; the learned, who see all things through books, do not understand them; the great despise. The fashionable may ridicule them: but the author has created himself an interest in the heart of the retired and lonely student of nature, which can never die.”
Quotes About William Hazlitt
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge on William Hazlitt
“His manners are to 99 in 100 singularly repulsive—; brow-hanging, shoe-contemplative, strange. … he is, I verily believe, kindly-nature; is very of, attentive to, and patient with children; but he is jealous, gloomy, and of an irritable pride — and addicted to women, as objects of sexual indulgence.”
Arthur Krystal on William Hazlitt
“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.”
Thomas Moore on William Hazlitt
“John Lamb (the brother of Charles) once knocked down Hazlitt, who was impertinent to him; and on those who were present interfering and begging Hazlitt to shake hands and forgive him, Hazlitt said, "Well, I don't care if I do. I am a metaphysician, and do not mind a blow; nothing but an idea hurts me."”
William Wordsworth on William Hazlitt
“The miscreant Hazlitt continues, I have heard, his abuses of Southey, Coleridge and myself, in the Examiner. — I hope that you do not associate with this Fellow, he is not a proper person to be admitted into respectable society, being the most perverse and malevolent Creature that ill luck has ever thrown in my way. Avoid him — hic niger est — And this, I understand, is the general opinion wherever he is known in London.”
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to William Hazlitt
About William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830) was an English writer remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism. He is sometimes esteemed the greatest English literary critic after Samuel Johnson.