William Hazlitt Quotes
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Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.
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A great man la an abstraction of some one excellence; but whoever fancies himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of excellence or defect of himself or others.
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I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth... I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them.
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It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed every one is at a play.
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In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide from feeling, and not from reason. If we were obliged to enter into a theoretical deliberation on every occasion before we act, life would be at a stand, and Art would be impracticable.
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Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves.
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Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
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His hypothesis goes to this - to make the common run of his readers fancy they can do all that can be done by genius, and to make the man of genius believe he can only do what is to be done by mechanical rules and systematic industry. This is not a very feasible scheme; nor is Sir Joshua sufficiently clear and explicit in his reasoning in support of it.
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There is some virtue in almost every vice, except hypocrisy; and even that, while it is a mockery of virtue, is at the same time a compliment to it.
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Habit is necessary to give power.
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Those who have the largest hearts have the soundest understandings; and they are the truest philosophers who can forget themselves.
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To-day kings, to-marrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing.
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Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.
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The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.
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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.
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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.
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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.".
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A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.
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Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken
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Those only deserve a monument who do not need one; that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.
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Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.
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Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity.
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Pride goes before a fall, they say, And yet we often find, The folks who throw all pride away Most often fall behind.
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We would willingly, and without remorse, sacrifice not only the present moment, but all the interval (no matter how long) that separates us from any favorite object.