Hazlitt Quotes

Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life. ~ William Hazlitt

Envy is the deformed and distorted offspring of egotism; and when we reflect on the strange and disproportioned character of the parent, we cannot wonder at the perversity and waywardness of the child. ~ William Hazlitt

Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity. ~ William Hazlitt

The great merit of gold is precisely that it is scarce; that its quantity is limited by nature; that it is costly to discover, to mine, and to process; and that it cannot be created by political fiat or caprice. ~ Henry Hazlitt

I have known persons without a friend
never any one without some virtue. The virtues of the former conspired with their vices to make the whole world their enemies. ~ William Hazlitt

We had rather do anything than acknowledge the merit of another if we can help it. We cannot bear a superior or an equal. Hence ridicule is sure to prevail over truth, for the malice of mankind, thrown into the scale, gives the casting weight. ~ William Hazlitt

We are not hypocrites in our sleep. ~ William Hazlitt

The notion that we can dismiss the views of all previous thinkers surely leaves no basis for the hope that our own work will prove of any value to others. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Zeal will do more than knowledge. ~ William Hazlitt

The quickest way to detect error in analogy is to carry it out as far as it will go - and further. Every analogy will break down somewhere. Any analogy if carried out far enough becomes absurd. ~ Henry Hazlitt

The fear of punishment may be necessary to the suppression of vice; but it also suspends the finer motives of virtue. ~ William Hazlitt

Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul. ~ William Hazlitt

To be forward to praise others implies either great eminence, that can afford to, part with applause; or great quickness of discernment, with confidence in our own judgments; or great sincerity and love of truth, getting the better of our self-love. ~ William Hazlitt

If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago. ~ William Hazlitt

The best prices are not the highest prices, but the prices that encourage the largest volume of production and the largest volume of sales. The best wage rates for labor are not the highest wage rates, but the wage rates that permit full production, full employment and the largest sustained payrolls. The best profits, from the standpoint not only of industry but of labor, are not the lowest profits, but the profits that encourage most people to become employers or to provide more employment than before. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Features alone do not run in the blood; vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel. ~ William Hazlitt

Up to a certain point it is necessary to produce shoes. But it is also necessary to produce coats, shirts, trousers, homes, plows, shovels, factories, bridges, milk and bread. It would be idiotic to go on piling up mountains of surplus shoes, simply because we could do it, while hundreds of more urgent needs went unfilled. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture. ~ William Hazlitt

In some situations, if you say nothing, you are called dull; if you talk, you are thought impertinent and arrogant. It is hard to know what to do in this case. The question seems to be, whether your vanity or your prudence predominates. ~ William Hazlitt

The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition. ~ William Hazlitt

A certain amount of taxes is of course indispensable to carry on essential government functions. Reasonable taxes for this purpose need not hurt production much. ~ Henry Hazlitt

He who does nothing renders himself incapable of doing any thing; but while we are executing any work, we are preparing and qualifying ourselves to undertake another. ~ William Hazlitt

The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard. ~ William Hazlitt

Familiarity confounds all traits of distinction; interest and prejudice take away the power of judging. ~ William Hazlitt

The real solution to the problem of poverty consists in finding how to increase the employment and earning power of the poor. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Man is, so to speak, an endless and infinitely varied repetition: and if we know what one man feels, we so far know what a thousand feel in the sanctuary of their being. Our feeling of general humanity is at once an aggregate of a thousand different truths, and it is also the same truth a thousand times told. ~ William Hazlitt

The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be. ~ William Hazlitt

The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment, so that, in short, the public ear is at the mercy of the first impudent pretender who chooses to fill it with noisy assertions, or false surmises, or secret whispers. What is said by one is heard by all; the supposition that a thing is known to all the world makes all the world believe it, and the hollow repetition of a vague report drowns the 'still, small voice' of reason. ~ William Hazlitt

Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that. ~ William Hazlitt

Thus, to give an obvious instance, if I have once enjoyed the cool shade of a tree, and been lulled into a deep repose by the sound of a brook running at its feet, I am sure that wherever I can find a tree and a brook, I can enjoy the same pleasure again. Hence, when I imagine these objects, I can easily form a mystic personification of the friendly power that inhabits them, Dryad or Naiad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting shade. Hence the origin of the Grecian mythology. ~ William Hazlitt

The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature. ~ William Hazlitt

An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers. ~ William Hazlitt

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. ~ William Hazlitt

No matter whether it is their intention or not, almost anything that the rich can legally do tends to help the poor. The spending of the rich gives employment to the poor. But the saving of the rich, and their investment of these savings in the means of production, gives just as much employment, and in addition makes that employment constantly more productive and more highly paid, while it also constantly increases and cheapens the production of necessities and amenities for the masses. ~ Henry Hazlitt

The power of attaching an interest to the most trifling or painful pursuits, in which our whole attention and faculties are engaged, is one of the greatest happinesses of our nature. The common soldier mounts the breach with joy; the miser deliberately starves himself to death; the mathematician sets about extracting the cube-root with a feeling of enthusiasm; and the lawyer sheds tears of admiration over "Coke upon Littleton." It is the same through life. He who is not in some measure a pedant, though he maybe wise, cannot be a very happy man. ~ William Hazlitt

The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers. ~ William Hazlitt

Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched tribal dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.' ~ Henry Hazlitt

People try to reconcile you to a disappointment in love by asking why you should cherish a passion for an object that has proved itself worthless. Had you known this before, you would not have encouraged the passion; but that having been once formed, knowledge does not destroy it. If we have drank poison, finding it out does not prevent its being in our veins: so passion leaves its poison in the mind! ~ William Hazlitt

An accomplished coquette excites the passions of others, in proportion as she feels none herself. ~ William Hazlitt

There are millions receiving government payments who have come to consider them as an earned right, who of course find them inadequate, and who are outraged at the slightest suggestion of a critical re-examination of the subject. The political pressure for constant extension and increase of these benefits is almost irresistible. ~ Henry Hazlitt

We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects. ~ William Hazlitt

The government never lends or gives anything to business that it does not take away from business. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Yet it ought to be clear that a minimum wage law is, at best, a limited weapon for combatting the evil of low wages, and that the possible good to be achieved by such a law can exceed the possible harm only in proportion as its aims are modest. The more ambitious such a law is, the larger the number of workers it attempts to cover, and the more it attempts to raise their wages, the more likely are its harmful effects to exceed its good effects. ~ Henry Hazlitt

If a government resorts to inflation, that is, creates money in order to cover its budget deficits or expands credit in order to stimulate business, then no power on earth, no gimmick, device, trick or even indexation can prevent its economic consequences. ~ Henry Hazlitt

We hate old friends: we hate old books: we hate old opinions; and at last we come to hate ourselves. ~ William Hazlitt

When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: 'Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.' It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government. ~ Henry Hazlitt

In the theatre, people talk. Talk, talk until the cows come home about journeys of discovery and about what Hazlitt thought of a line of Shakespeare. I can't stand it. ~ Anthony Hopkins

One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so; for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed. ~ William Hazlitt

If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation. ~ William Hazlitt

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.
[The Sick Chamber (The New Monthly Magazine , August 1830)] ~ William Hazlitt

Saving" in short, in the modern world, is only another form of spending. ~ Henry Hazlitt

The worst old age is that of the mind. ~ William Hazlitt

The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices. ~ William Hazlitt

There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiless, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself. ~ William Hazlitt

Government provided free tuition tends more and more to produce a uniform conformist education, with college faculties ultimately dependent for their jobs on the government, and so developing an economic interest in profession and teaching a statist, pro-government, and socialist ideology. ~ Henry Hazlitt

He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies. ~ William Hazlitt

Socialists will often talk as if some form of superbly equalized destitution were preferable to "maldistributed" plenty. A national income that is rapidly growing in absolute terms for practically everyone will be deplored because it is making the rich richer. ~ Henry Hazlitt

If you consume animal derived foods or use other animal derived products you are by no stretch of the imagination an "environmentalist." You are a rank hypocrite. ~ Will Hazlitt

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. ~ William Hazlitt

Those only deserve a monument who do not need one; that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men. ~ William Hazlitt

The vital consideration of incentives is almost systematically overlooked in the proposals of agitators for more and bigger government welfare schemes. We should all be concerned about the plight of the poor and unfortunate. But the hard two-part question that any plan for relieving poverty must answer is: How can we mitigate the penalties of failure and misfortune without undermining the incentives to effort and success. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Just as there is no technical improvement that would not hurt someone, so there is no change in public taste or morals, even for the better, that would not hurt someone. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Government relief tends constantly to get out of hand. And even when it is kept within reasonable bounds it tends to reduce the incentives to work and to save both of those who receive it and of those who are forced to pay it. It may be said, in fact, that practically every measure that governments take with the ostensible object of 'helping the poor' has the long-run effect of doing the opposite. ~ Henry Hazlitt

I bear the creature no ill-will, but still I hate the very sight of it. ~ William Hazlitt

The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation. ~ William Hazlitt

The sad fact is that today most of the heads of big businesses in America have become so confused or intimidated that, so far from carrying the free market to argument to the enemy, they fail to defend themselves adequately even when attacked. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Our contempt for others proves nothing but the illiberality and narrowness of our own views. ~ William Hazlitt

The ideas which now pass for brilliant innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors, and a further proof of the dictum that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it. ~ Henry Hazlitt

The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, "No. There was a fire in the room." ~ William Hazlitt

Political truth is libel; religious truth, blasphemy. ~ William Hazlitt

What inflation really does is to change the relationships of prices and costs. ~ Henry Hazlitt

The confined air of a metropolis is hurtful to the minds and bodies of those who have never lived out of it. It is impure, stagnant
without breathing-space to allow a larger view of ourselves or others
and gives birth to a puny, sickly, unwholesome, and degenerate race of beings. ~ William Hazlitt

In a free enterprise system, with an honest and stable money, there is dominantly a close link between effort and productivity, on the one hand, and economic reward on the other. Inflation severs this link. Reward comes to depend less and less on effort and production, and more and more on successful gambling and luck. ~ Henry Hazlitt

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. ~ William Hazlitt

So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything. ~ William Hazlitt

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

Malice often takes the garb of truth. ~ William Hazlitt

There is a strange idea abroad, held by all monetary cranks, that credit is something a banker gives to a man. Credit, on the contrary, is something a man already has. He has it, perhaps, because he already has marketable assets of a greater cash value than the loan for which he is asking. Or he has it because his character and past record have earned it. He brings it into the bank with him. That is why the banker makes him the loan. The banker is not giving something for nothing. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Would-be income guarantors ignore or despise the capitalistic system that makes their dreams dreamable and gives their redistribute-the-income proposals whatever plausibility they have. ~ Henry Hazlitt

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

When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business. ~ Henry Hazlitt

He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves. ~ William Hazlitt

The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to ranking spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness. ~ William Hazlitt

If there is to be no loss whatever of dignity or self-respect in getting and staying on relief, then there can be no gain in dignity or self-respect in makings some sacrifices to keep off. ~ Henry Hazlitt

You are never tired of painting, because you have to set down not what you know already, but what you have just discovered. ~ William Hazlitt

To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living. ~ William Hazlitt

The florid style is the reverse of the familiar. The last is employed as an unvarnished medium to convey ideas; the first is resorted to as a spangled veil to conceal the want of them. When there is nothing to be set down but words, it costs little to have them fine. ~ William Hazlitt

The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors. ~ William Hazlitt

When each of us is free to work out his own economic destiny, within the framework of the market economy, the institution of private property, and the general rule of law, we will all improve our economic condition much faster than when we are ordered around by bureaucrats. ~ Henry Hazlitt

The times call for courage. The times call for hard work. But if the demands are high, it is because the stakes are even higher. They are nothing less than the future of human liberty, which means the future of civilization. ~ Henry Hazlitt

We affect to laugh at the folly of those who put faith in nostrums, but are willing to see ourselves whether there is any truth in them. ~ William Hazlitt

The "virtue" of Keynes's teaching is that it praised thriftlessness, reckless spending, and unbalanced budgets and was therefore extremely palatable to the politicians in power. ~ Henry Hazlitt

A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof. The throwing out [of] malicious imputations against any character leaves a stain, which no after-refutation can wipe out. To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said. The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it. ~ William Hazlitt

The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors. ~ William Hazlitt

Here we shall have to say simply that all government expenditures must eventually be paid out of the proceeds of taxation; that inflation itself is merely a form, and a particularly vicious form, of taxation. ~ Henry Hazlitt

The progress of civilization has meant the reduction of employment, not its increase. It is because we have become increasingly wealthy as a nation that we have been able virtually to eliminate child labor, to remove the necessity of work for many of the aged and to make it unnecessary for millions of women to take jobs. ~ Henry Hazlitt

He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery. ~ William Hazlitt

The essential function of the State is to maintain peace, justice, law, and order, and to protect the individual citizen against aggression, violence, theft, and fraud. ~ Henry Hazlitt

A taste for liberal art is necessary to complete the character of a gentleman, Science alone is hard and mechanical. It exercises the understanding upon things out of ourselves, while it leaves the affections unemployed, or engrossed with our own immediate, narrow interests. ~ William Hazlitt

There is nothing good to be had in the country, or if there is, they will not let you have it. ~ William Hazlitt