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Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Art
Weaknesses
People
Cunning
Defects
Deceit
Deception
Discovering
Weakness
Knowledge
Concealing

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Man is a poetical animal, and delights in fiction.
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Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.
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The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame.
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Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.
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The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favor.
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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.
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There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.
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Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves.
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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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Men of the greatest genius are not always the most prodigal of their encomiums. But then it is when their range of power is confined, and they have in fact little perception, except of their own particular kind of excellence.
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None but those who are happy in themselves can make others so.
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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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A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dulness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.
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You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
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It is only those who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to blood invariably on abstract ideas, that ever feel ennui.
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Painting for a whole morning gives one as excellent an appetite for one's dinner, as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his by riding over Banstead Downs.
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Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.
William Hazlitt
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What passes in the world for talent or dexterity or enterprise is often only a want of moral principle. We may succeed where others fail, not from a greater share of invention, but from not being nice in the choice of expedients.
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Death puts an end to rivalship and competition. The dead can boast no advantage over us, nor can we triumph over them.
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We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to their virtues.
William Hazlitt