Quote of the Day: William Hazlitt on Daily Inspiration

It is late June, and the to-do list sits on your desk like a dare. You have already spent the day making decisions, answering messages, putting out small fires, and now the larger thing you care about waits untouched. Starting feels expensive; you’re sure you don’t have the bandwidth. Then a quieter truth cuts through the fatigue: “The more we do, the more we can do.”

The line isn’t a pep talk; it’s a description of how human capacity actually grows. Effort doesn’t only drain energy, it builds it. When you move from thinking to doing, your brain stops negotiating and starts learning. You develop timing, pattern-recognition, and the tacit sense of “how this goes” that no instruction can deliver. What was once clumsy becomes automatic, and what was once daunting becomes merely next.

That’s why momentum is underrated and resilience is often misread. We imagine endurance as a trait you either have or don’t. In reality, it is trained, by repetitions, by feedback, by finishing. Each completed task reduces the friction of the next one: confidence rises, uncertainty shrinks, and initiation stops feeling like a cliff.

There’s also a small paradox here that experienced people recognize: the busier you are with the right commitments, the more time seems to appear. Order compresses slack; idleness leaks hours into indecision and distraction. This is success without the cult of exhaustion, steady engagement, with intention, and real rest when it’s earned.

William Hazlitt, a central voice of Romantic-era criticism and essay writing, watched ambition collide with uncertainty in a changing society. He distrusted idle speculation and prized application, the daily practice that turns talent into power.

So today, don’t argue with your limits; test them. Start small, make one useful thing, take one next step. Capacity is not a fixed allotment. It expands under use.