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The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science is the desire to accept false causes rather than none or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Desire
False
Science
None
Thing
Accept
Ignorance
Accepting
Causes
Unwillingness
Knowledge
Origin
Rather
Acknowledge

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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The most learned are often the most narrow minded.
William Hazlitt
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No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it who sees at once what is to be done in given circumstances and does it. He does not beat about the bush for difficulties or excuses, but goes the shortest and most effectual way to work to attain his own ends, or to accomplish a useful object.
William Hazlitt
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Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.
William Hazlitt
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We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.
William Hazlitt
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Every one in a crowd has the power to throw dirt none out of ten have the inclination.
William Hazlitt
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We talk little when we do not talk about ourselves.
William Hazlitt
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Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.
William Hazlitt
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The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.
William Hazlitt
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Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?
William Hazlitt
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Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly.
William Hazlitt
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The incentive to ambition is the love of power.
William Hazlitt
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Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit -- or a mask. . . . The foregoing maxim shows the difference between truth and sarcasm.
William Hazlitt
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The assumption of merit is easier, less embarrassing, and more effectual than the actual attainment of it.
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.
William Hazlitt
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The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.
William Hazlitt
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The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.
William Hazlitt
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When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
William Hazlitt
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One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed.
William Hazlitt