William Hazlitt

"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."

"The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other peoples virtues."

"Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves."

"General principles are not the less true or important because, from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it, or like that secret influence which binds the world together and holds the planets in their orbits."

"Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own."

"Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for — they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood?"

"There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our friends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please — that is as they please or displease us."

"Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food."

"The public have neither shame or gratitude."

"No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he."

"Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other peoples weaknesses."

"Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope."