Quote

The best way to make ourselves agreeable to others is by seeming to think them so. If we appear fully sensible of their good qualities they will not complain of the want of them in us.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Thinking
Fully
Quality
Agreeable
Others
Seeming
Best
Complain
Way
Sensible
Make
Qualities
Good
Complaining
Think
Appear

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That which is not, shall never be that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident.
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I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.
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People do not persist in their vices because they are not weary of them, but because they cannot leave them off. It is the nature of vice to leave us no resource but in itself.
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I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it who sees at once what is to be done in given circumstances and does it. He does not beat about the bush for difficulties or excuses, but goes the shortest and most effectual way to work to attain his own ends, or to accomplish a useful object.
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In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.
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He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan.
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There is a quiet repose and steadiness about the happiness of age, if the life has been well spent. Its feebleness is not painful. The nervous system has lost its acuteness. But, in mature years we feel that a burn, a scald, a cut, is more tolerable than it was in the sensitive period of youth.
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Those who have had none of the cares of this life to harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to the hopes and fears of the next to vary the prospect before them.
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Comedy naturally wears itself out - destroys the very food on which it lives and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at.
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The expression of a gentleman's face is not so much that of refinement, as of flexibility, not of sensibility and enthusiasm as of indifference it argues presence of mind rather than enlargement of ideas.
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A woman's vanity is interested in making the object of her choice the god of her idolatry.
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Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The learned are mere literary drudges.
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To speak highly of one with whom we are intimate is a species of egotism. Our modesty as well as our jealousy teaches us caution on this subject.
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The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.
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Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.
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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.
William Hazlitt
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A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.
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In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide from feeling, and not from reason. If we were obliged to enter into a theoretical deliberation on every occasion before we act, life would be at a stand, and Art would be impracticable.
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No really great man ever thought himself so.
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Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.
William Hazlitt