Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

Hazlitt links fear of death less to death itself than to the felt emptiness of one’s life. The more a person suspects they have “lived in vain”—wasted time, failed to pursue meaningful aims, or left no lasting work or love—the more death appears as a final verdict that seals that failure. Conversely, a life experienced as purposeful can soften death’s sting, because mortality then seems like a natural limit rather than an annihilating negation. The remark reflects Hazlitt’s moral-psychological style: he treats emotions (here, dread) as symptoms of underlying self-judgment, implying that the remedy is not denial of death but a fuller, more intentional life.