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Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority; natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself.
William Hazlitt -
The worst old age is that of the mind.
William Hazlitt
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The safest kind of praise is to foretell that another will become great in some particular way. It has the greatest show of magnanimity and the least of it in reality.
William Hazlitt -
The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way ... an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.
William Hazlitt -
Any woman may act the part of a coquette successfully who has the reputation without the scruples of modesty. If a woman passes the bounds of propriety for our sakes, and throws herself unblushingly at our heads, we conclude it is either from a sudden and violent liking, or from extraordinary merit on our parts, either of which is enough to turn any man's head who has a single spark of gallantry or vanity in his composition.
William Hazlitt -
Silence is one great art of conversation.
William Hazlitt -
Reflection brakes men cowards. There is no object that can be put in competition with life, unless it is viewed through the medium of passion, and we are hurried away by the impulse of the moment.
William Hazlitt -
The love of fame is too high and delicate a feeling in the mind to be mixed up with realities, it is a solitary abstraction. * * * A name "fast anchored in the deep abyss of time" is like a star twinkling in the firmament, cold, silent, distant, but eternal and sublime; and our transmitting one to posterity is as if we should contemplate our translation to the skies.
William Hazlitt
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Envy is littleness of soul.
William Hazlitt -
Without life there can be no action — no objects of pursuit — no restless desires — no tormenting passions. Hence it is that we fondly cling to it — that we dread its termination as the close, not of enjoyment, but of hope.
William Hazlitt -
Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.
William Hazlitt -
What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.
William Hazlitt -
The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.
William Hazlitt -
We are all of us, more or less, the slaves of opinion.
William Hazlitt
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The essence of poetry is will and passion.
William Hazlitt -
The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.
William Hazlitt -
One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole or ace, than if one has never had a chance of winning it.
William Hazlitt -
We do not attend to the advice of the sage and experienced because we think they are old, forgetting that they once were young and placed in the same situations as ourselves.
William Hazlitt -
Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.
William Hazlitt -
There are persons who are never easy unless they are putting your books and papers in order--that is, according to their notions of the matter--and hide things lest they should be lost, where neither the owner nor anybody else can find them. This is a sort of magpie faculty. If anything is left where you want it, it is called litter. There is a pedantry in housewifery, as well as in the gravest concerns. Abraham Tucker complained that whenever his maid servant had been in his library, he could not see comfortably to work again for several days.
William Hazlitt
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The more a man writes, the more he can write.
William Hazlitt -
Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence, and see all things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and hope; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They have not been "hurt by the archers", nor has the iron entered their souls. The world has no hand on them.
William Hazlitt -
It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
William Hazlitt -
In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views; as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.
William Hazlitt