Quote

Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism ... tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Every
Vain
Ostentation
Minute
Whim
Issue
Egotism
Rule
Exclusive
Clothes
Conform
Minutes
Tied
Fashion
Bound
Issues
Bounds
Abortive

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We prefer ourselves to others, only because we a have more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person's.
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I am always afraid of a fool. One cannot be sure that he is not a knave as well.
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Features alone do not run in the blood vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.
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Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly.
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Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
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Painters... are the most lively observers of what passes in the world about them, and the closest observers of what passes in their own minds.
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No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.
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Silence is one great art of conversation.
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Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.
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Comedy naturally wears itself out - destroys the very food on which it lives and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at.
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Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, which never surfeits. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust. Hatred alone is immortal.
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The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.
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A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dulness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.
William Hazlitt
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Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity.
William Hazlitt
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The only true retirement is that of the heart the only true leisure is the repose of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference whether they are young or old and they die as they have lived, with graceful resignation.
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Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.
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The insolence of the vulgar is in proportion to their ignorance. They treat everything with contempt which they do not understand.
William Hazlitt
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To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.
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He who lives wisely to himself and his own heart looks at the busy world through the loopholes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray.
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A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.
William Hazlitt