Quote

There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Things
Esteem
Think
Piece
Displease
Thinking
Please
Quackery
Pieces
Profess
Truth
Deceive
Littles
Hype
Better
Entertain
Little
Deceiving

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The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame.
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Habit in most cases hardens and encrusts by taking away the keener edge of our sensations: but does it not in others quicken and refine, by giving a mechanical facility and by engrafting an acquired sense?
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The number of objects we see from living in a large city amuses the mind like a perpetual raree-show, without supplying it with any ideas.
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Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly.
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There cannot be a surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel.
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A King (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.
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The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud.
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Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
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Men of gravity are intellectual stammerers, whose thoughts move slowly.
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Pride erects a little kingdom of its own, and acts as sovereign in it.
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Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.
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To be forward to praise others implies either great eminence, that can afford to, part with applause or great quickness of discernment, with confidence in our own judgments or great sincerity and love of truth, getting the better of our self-love.
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He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.
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No really great man ever thought himself so.
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I am proud up to the point of equality everything above or below that appears to me arrant impertinence or abject meanness.
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Whatever excites the spirit of contradiction is capable of producing the last effects of heroism which is only the highest pitch of obstinacy, in a good or bad cause, in wisdom or folly.
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Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart.
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Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern. Why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?
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