William Hazlitt Quotes
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Men of gravity are intellectual stammerers, whose thoughts move slowly.
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General principles are not the less true or important because from their nature they elude immediate observation; they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it.
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Rules and models destroy genius and art.
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A King (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.
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Wherever the Government does not emanate...from the people, the principle of the Government, the esprit de corps, the point of honour, in all those connected with it, and raised by it to privileges above the law and above humanity, will be hatred to the people.
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The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.
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Grace in women has more effect than beauty.
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Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.
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As is our confidence, so is our capacity.
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We prefer ourselves to others, only because we a have more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person's.
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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.
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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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Envy is littleness of soul.
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It is easier taking the beaten path than making our way over bogs and precipices. The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information.
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I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it.
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There is nothing good to be had in the country, or if there is, they will not let you have it.
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We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves.
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Envy is the deformed and distorted offspring of egotism; and when we reflect on the strange and disproportioned character of the parent, we cannot wonder at the perversity and waywardness of the child.
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No young man ever thinks he shall die.
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Genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength.
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To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.
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He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.
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Dandyism is a species of genius.
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There is evil poured upon the earth from the overflowings of corruption-- Sickness, and poverty, and pain, and guilt, and madness, and sorrow; But, as the water from a fountain riseth and sinketh to its level, Ceaselessly toileth justice to equalize the lots of men.