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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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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Actual
Genius
Easier
Talent
Effectual
Less
Attainment
Embarrassing
Assumption
Merit

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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The secret of the difficulties of those people who make a great deal of money, and yet are always in want of it, is this-they throw it away as soon as they get it on the first whim or extravagance that strikes them, and have nothing left to meet ordinary expenses or discharge old debts.
William Hazlitt
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No truly great person ever thought themselves so.
William Hazlitt
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The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.
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 prefer a person with vivacity and high spirits, though bordering upon insolence, to the timid and pusillanimous we are fonder of wit joined to malice than of dullness without it.
William Hazlitt
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The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.
William Hazlitt
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Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know.
William Hazlitt
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Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.
William Hazlitt
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If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.
William Hazlitt
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The expression of a gentleman's face is not so much that of refinement, as of flexibility, not of sensibility and enthusiasm as of indifference it argues presence of mind rather than enlargement of ideas.
William Hazlitt
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He who would see old Hoghton right Must view it by the pale moonlight.
William Hazlitt
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The more you do, the more you can do.
William Hazlitt
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The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.
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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There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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Painting for a whole morning gives one as excellent an appetite for one's dinner, as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his by riding over Banstead Downs.
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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It is a false principle that because we are entirely occupied with ourselves, we must equally occupy the thoughts of others. The contrary inference is the fair one.
William Hazlitt
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The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.
William Hazlitt