Daily Inspiration Quote by William Hazlitt

Friendship, Hazlitt suggests, is most corruptible at the exact point it starts keeping accounts. The line is built like a paradox with a sting in the tail: the person he loves visiting most, the one whose company he feels as pure gain, "never did me the smallest favor". In a culture where sociability often doubled as networking (and where patronage could make or break a writer), Hazlitt is drawing a hard boundary between warmth and obligation. He wants intimacy without debt.

The intent is quietly polemical. Hazlitt, a critic by trade and temperament, disliked the way favors soften honesty: once someone has helped you, gratitude becomes a leash, and candor starts to look like betrayal. By praising the friend who never "did" anything for him, he elevates a relationship that can't be redeemed for advancement, forgiveness, or leverage. Pleasure and regret mark the true emotional economy here; the absence of favors proves the presence of genuine regard.

Subtext: the most valuable companionship is the one that leaves your autonomy intact. No favors means no silent claim on your time, no expectation of ideological alignment, no backstage pressure to applaud mediocre work. It also hints at Hazlitt's own bruised experience with literary circles, where convivial rooms could hide transactional motives. The sentence performs what it argues: crisp, unsentimental, and allergic to hypocrisy, it turns a social norm inside out and dares you to notice how often "kindness" is really a down payment.