William Hazlitt Quotes
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Horus non numero nisi serenas (I count only the sunny hours).
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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.
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We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.
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No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.
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Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.
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We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
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Genius is native to the soil where it grows — is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun — and is not a hot - house plant or an exotic.
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We grow tired of ourselves, much more of other people.
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The wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest yearning after happiness; and to desire is in some sense to enjoy.
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Believe all the good you can of everyone. Do not measure others by yourself. If they have advantages which you have not, let your liberality keep pace with their good fortune. Envy no one, and you need envy no one.
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Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man.
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The only true retirement is that of the heart; the only true leisure is the repose of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference whether they are young or old; and they die as they have lived, with graceful resignation.
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Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.
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If our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as little note of them as the dial does of those that are clouded.
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Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own, and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image of itself. Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant objects please because they border on its confines and are moulded by its touch.
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The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.
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Well I've had a happy life.
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We may be willing to tell a story twice, never to hear it more than once.
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Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.
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The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, "No. There was a fire in the room."
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The incentive to ambition is the love of power.
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Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood.
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The great requisite for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination.
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Learning is its own exceeding great reward.