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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
Idiot
Advantage
Wise
Cannot
Descend
Much
Despicable
Men
Advantages
Thoroughly
Lower

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Horus non numero nisi serenas (I count only the sunny hours).
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Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves.
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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.
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Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.
William Hazlitt
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There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.
William Hazlitt
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Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him.
William Hazlitt
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Wherever the Government does not emanate...from the people, the principle of the Government, the esprit de corps, the point of honour, in all those connected with it, and raised by it to privileges above the law and above humanity, will be hatred to the people.
William Hazlitt
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Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not, and to do what we cannot.
William Hazlitt
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A man is a hypocrite only when he affects to take a delight in what he does not feel, not because he takes a perverse delight in opposite things.
William Hazlitt
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It might be argued, that to be a knave is the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary to be a learned man.
William Hazlitt
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The title of Ultracrepidarian critics has been given to those persons who find fault with small and insignificant details.
William Hazlitt
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Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps.
William Hazlitt
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Nothing precludes sympathy so much as a perfect indifference to it
William Hazlitt
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We can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home!
William Hazlitt
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Death cancels everything but truth and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization.
William Hazlitt
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The most learned are often the most narrow minded.
William Hazlitt
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To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.
William Hazlitt
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The surest hindrance of success is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the judgment of the public. He who is determined not to be satisfied with anything short of perfection will never do anything to please himself or others.
William Hazlitt
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We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.
William Hazlitt
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Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident wit is the product of art and fancy.
William Hazlitt