William Hazlitt Quotes
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Cowardice is not synonymous with prudence. It often happens that the better part of discretion is valor.
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Many a man would have turned rogue if he knew how.
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One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey; but I like to go by myself.
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There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.
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One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so; for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed.
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The insolence of the vulgar is in proportion to their ignorance. They treat everything with contempt which they do not understand.
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As we are poetical in our natures, so we delight in fable.
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We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.
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Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.
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The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne from a sort of dignity belonging to them.
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Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as the detecting another in an untruth. It strikes at the root of our confidence ever after.
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Despair swallows up cowardice.
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Poverty is the test of civility and the touchstone of friendship.
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A man in love prefers his passion to every other consideration, and is fonder of his mistress than he is of virtue. Should she prove vicious, she makes vice lovely in his eyes.
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Keep your misfortunes to yourself.
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He who does nothing renders himself incapable of doing any thing; but while we are executing any work, we are preparing and qualifying ourselves to undertake another.
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Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it.
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People try to reconcile you to a disappointment in love by asking why you should cherish a passion for an object that has proved itself worthless. Had you known this before, you would not have encouraged the passion; but that having been once formed, knowledge does not destroy it. If we have drank poison, finding it out does not prevent its being in our veins: so passion leaves its poison in the mind!
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Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.
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The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.
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Landscape painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy.
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Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner - and then to thinking! ... I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.
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Diffidence and awkwardness are antidotes to love.
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Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.