Daily Inspiration Quote by William Hazlitt

Hazlitt’s sting is in the half-finished second clause: “a vain man, in order that it may.” He doesn’t even need to name what the vain man speaks - the ellipsis is the indictment. Truth, for Hazlitt, isn’t a badge; it’s a cost. The honest man tells it “though it may give offence,” meaning offence is collateral damage, not the point. The vain man courts offence as proof of daring, mistaking backlash for bravery and noise for integrity. It’s a diagnosis of performative candor two centuries before the term existed.

As a critic in an era of pamphlet wars, partisan newspapers, and salon reputations, Hazlitt knew how easily “plain speaking” could be weaponized into a personal brand. The line reads like a note from the trenches of early 19th-century public argument: radical politics curdling into factional ego; literary judgments made less to illuminate than to posture. He’s wary of the self-appointed truth-teller whose “honesty” is really a hunger to be seen as unsparing, unbought, unafraid.

The subtext is moral psychology. The honest speaker accepts isolation as a consequence of fidelity to reality. The vain speaker uses “truth” as a delivery system for self-importance, selecting facts not for accuracy but for impact. Hazlitt’s intent isn’t to flatter tact or politeness; it’s to separate integrity from cruelty, and conviction from the intoxicating theatre of provocation.