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There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.
William Hazlitt -
Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.
William Hazlitt
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Like a rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of going home, or that it will soon be night.
William Hazlitt -
Abuse is an indirect species of homage.
William Hazlitt -
A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dulness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.
William Hazlitt -
A distinction has been made between acuteness and subtlety of understanding. This might be illustrated by saying that acuteness consists in taking up the points or solid atoms, subtlety in feeling the air of truth.
William Hazlitt -
Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge.
William Hazlitt -
They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.
William Hazlitt
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The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.
William Hazlitt -
An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.
William Hazlitt -
Humour is the making others act or talk absurdly and unconsciously; wit is the pointing out and ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more or less ill-nature.
William Hazlitt -
The last sort I shall mention are verbal critics - mere word-catchers, fellows that pick out a word in a sentence and a sentence in a volume, and tell you it is wrong. The title of Ultra-Crepidarian critics has been given to a variety of this species.
William Hazlitt -
To-day kings, to-marrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing.
William Hazlitt -
Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken
William Hazlitt
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Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good – fortune.
William Hazlitt -
All is without form and void. Someone said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing and very like.
William Hazlitt -
...greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into itself.
William Hazlitt -
He who would see old Hoghton right Must view it by the pale moonlight.
William Hazlitt -
The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out.
William Hazlitt -
We grow tired of ourselves, much more of other people.
William Hazlitt
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The public is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice.
William Hazlitt -
There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. "I count only the hours that are serene.".
William Hazlitt -
There cannot be a surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel.
William Hazlitt -
Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.
William Hazlitt