William Hazlitt

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer - that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

Those who have the largest hearts have the soundest understandings; and they are the truest philosophers who can forget themselves.

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end.

The secret of the difficulties of those people who make a great deal of money, and yet are always in want of it, is this-they throw it away as soon as they get it on the first whim or extravagance that strikes them, and have nothing left to meet ordinary expenses or discharge old debts.

Our lives are ruled by impermanence. The challenge is how to create something of enduring value within the context of our impermanent lives. Soka Gakkai<br />Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.

Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.

Books are a world in themselves, it is true; but they are not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it.

The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.

In what we really understand, we reason but little.

To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.

One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.

Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it.

Those who are pleased with the fewest things know the least, as those who are pleased with everything know nothing.

The diffusion of taste is not the same thing as the improvement of taste.

A thought must tell at once, or not at all.

The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne from a sort of dignity belonging to them.

No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.

Persons of slender intellectual stamina dread competition, as dwarfs are afraid of being run over in the street.

Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know.

It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.

Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.

The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.

What are the publications that succeed? Those that pretend to teach the public that the persons they have been accustomed unwittingly to look up to as the lights of the earth are no better than themselves.

Prejudice is never easy unless it can pass itself off for reason.

Power is pleasure; and pleasure sweetens pain.

We are not satisfied to be right, unless we can prove others to be quite wrong.

He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan.

Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs.

We all wear some disguise, make some professions, use some artifice, to set ourselves off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom.

We do not die wholly at our deaths: we have mouldered away gradually long before. Faculty after faculty, interest after interest, attachment after attachment disappear: we are torn from ourselves while living.