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To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Wish
Think
Humankind
Thinking
Ill
Highest
Mankind
Perhaps
Virtue
Wisdom

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.
William Hazlitt
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We are all of us, more or less, the slaves of opinion.
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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Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.
William Hazlitt
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Affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body.
William Hazlitt
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Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.
William Hazlitt
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A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.
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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We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.
William Hazlitt
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Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.
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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It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.
William Hazlitt
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Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it.
William Hazlitt
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What I mean by living to one's self is living in the world, as in it, not of it.
William Hazlitt
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We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.
William Hazlitt
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It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.
William Hazlitt
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To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said.
William Hazlitt
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We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.
William Hazlitt
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There is nothing more to be esteemed than a manly firmness and decision of character.
William Hazlitt
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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