William Hazlitt Quotes
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There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amends for everything. To be young is to be as one of the Immortals.
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To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
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Elegance is something more than ease; it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling, spirited yet delicate.
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True friendship is self-love at second hand; where, as in a flattering mirror we may see our virtues magnified and our errors softened, and where we may fancy our opinion of ourselves confirmed by an impartial and faithful witness.
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Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?
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A really great man has always an idea of something greater than himself.
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Those who can command themselves command others.
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He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery.
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We go on a journey to be free of all impediments; to leave ourselves behind much more than to get rid of others
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You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
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Reflection makes men cowards.
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Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.
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Our notions with respect to the importance of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery. The love of life is, in general, the effect not of our enjoyments, but of our passions.
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Affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body.
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The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.
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Grace in women has more effect than beauty. We sometimes see a certain fine self-possession, an habitual voluptuousness of character, which reposes on its own sensations and derives pleasure from all around it, that is more irresistible than any other attraction. There is an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, "in their eyes, in their arms, and their hands, and their face," which robs us of ourselves, and draws us by a secret sympathy towards them.
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We can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home!
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Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
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Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.
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The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors. The first he does not admit of - the last he does not concern himself about.
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True friendship is self-love at second-hand.
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To speak highly of one with whom we are intimate is a species of egotism. Our modesty as well as our jealousy teaches us caution on this subject.
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To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.
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Kings ought never to be seen upon the stage. In the abstract, they are very disagreeable characters: it is only while living that they are 'the best of kings'. It is their power, their splendour, it is the apprehension of the personal consequences of their favour or their hatred that dazzles the imagination and suspends the judgement of their favourites or their vassals; but death cancels the bond of allegiance and of interest; and seen AS THEY WERE, their power and their pretensions look monstrous and ridiculous.