We must be doing something to be happy.
— William Hazlitt
The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.
The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.
Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.
The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.
The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings.
A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.
The most learned are often the most narrow minded.
Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.
No truly great person ever thought themselves so.
No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.
A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage.
It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.
The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.
I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.
Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.
The incentive to ambition is the love of power.
We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
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 more we do, the more we can do.
People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.
There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.
Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.
We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.
The busier we are the more leisure we have.
Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.
The public have neither shame or gratitude.
Grace in women has more effect than beauty.
The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favor.
We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.
Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.
He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.
The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors. The first he does not admit of - the last he does not concern himself about.
Rules and models destroy genius and art.
The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.
There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.
I'm not smart, but I like to observe. Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.
To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.
Good temper is one of the greatest preservers of the features.
There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.
To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
Those who can command themselves command others.
We can scarcely hate anyone that we know.
Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.
Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.
You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.
Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.
Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.
