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There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Wise
Cannot
Descend
Much
Despicable
Men
Advantages
Thoroughly
Lower
Idiot
Advantage

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Love at first sight is only realizing an imagination that has always haunted us or meeting with a face, a figure, or cast of expression in perfection that we have seen and admired in a less degree or in less favorable circumstances a hundred times before.
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Actors are the only honest hypocrites.
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First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.
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Common sense, to most people, is nothing more than their own opinions.
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The safest kind of praise is to foretell that another will become great in some particular way. It has the greatest show of magnanimity and the least of it in reality.
William Hazlitt
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A woman's vanity is interested in making the object of her choice the god of her idolatry.
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A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common.
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Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it.
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Lying is the strongest acknowledgement of the force of truth.
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As we advance in life, we acquire a keener sense of the value of time. Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence and we become misers in this respect.
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The affected modesty of most women is a decoy for the generous, the delicate, and unsuspecting while the artful, the bold, and unfeeling either see or break through its slender disguises.
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A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.
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The soul of dispatch is decision.
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Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.
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The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.
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You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others.
William Hazlitt
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The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.
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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