Quote

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

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.
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The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.
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We talk little when we do not talk about ourselves.
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Those who are pleased with the fewest things know the least, as those who are pleased with everything know nothing.
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Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.
William Hazlitt
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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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We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.
William Hazlitt
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The objects that we have known in better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our affections, and give us strength to await our future lot.
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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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Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly.
William Hazlitt
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The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.
William Hazlitt
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Knowledge is pleasure as well as power.
William Hazlitt
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There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.
William Hazlitt
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A nickname is the hardest stone that the devil can throw at a man.
William Hazlitt
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Many a man would have turned rogue if he knew how.
William Hazlitt
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Persons who undertake to pry into, or cleanse out all the filth of a common sewer, either cannot have very nice noses, or will soon lose them.
William Hazlitt
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To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.
William Hazlitt
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A mighty stream of tendency.
William Hazlitt
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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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Learning is its own exceeding great reward and at the period of which we speak, it bore other fruits, not unworthy of it.
William Hazlitt