Quote

We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Love
Excellence
Merely
Circumstances
Choose
Friend
Particular
Flatters
Often
Circumstance
Self
Mistress

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.
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We trifle with, make sport of, and despise those who are attached to us, and follow those that fly from us.
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Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others!
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Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman dignity is proper to noblemen and majesty to kings.
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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.
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The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.
William Hazlitt
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Violence ever defeats its own ends. Where you cannot drive you can always persuade. A gentle word, a kind look, a god-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles. There is a secret pride in every human heart than revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.
William Hazlitt
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Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for - they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood?
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By despising all that has preceded us, we teach others to despise ourselves.
William Hazlitt
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The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desires of the soul, and of which it never tires.
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To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.
William Hazlitt
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It is not fit that every man should travel it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
William Hazlitt
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An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence a vain man, in order that it may.
William Hazlitt
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Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.
William Hazlitt
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Men of gravity are intellectual stammerers, whose thoughts move slowly.
William Hazlitt
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When one can do better than everyone else in the same walk, one does not make any very painful exertions to outdo oneself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.
William Hazlitt
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It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.
William Hazlitt
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It is better to drink of deep grief than to taste shallow pleasures.
William Hazlitt
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Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.
William Hazlitt
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The measure of any man's virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.
William Hazlitt