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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.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Exercise
Public
Prevents
Idea
Spell
Ideas
Spells
Ever
Wit
Think
Acts
Thinking
Private
Judgment

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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A taste for liberal art is necessary to complete the character of a gentleman, Science alone is hard and mechanical. It exercises the understanding upon things out of ourselves, while it leaves the affections unemployed, or engrossed with our own immediate, narrow interests.
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I can enjoy society in a room but out of doors, nature is company enough for me
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The more a man writes, the more he can write.
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To-day kings, to-marrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing.
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The worst old age is that of the mind.
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Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
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To great evils we submit, we resent little provocations.
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Spleen can subsist on any kind of food.
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The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.
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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.
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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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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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From the height from which the great look down on the world all the rest of mankind seem equal.
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The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.
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You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion.
William Hazlitt
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The Irish are hearty, the Scotch plausible, the French polite, the Germans good-natured, the Italians courtly, the Spaniards reserved and decorous - the English alone seem to exist in taking and giving offense.
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Humanity is to be met with in a den of robbers.
William Hazlitt
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Silence is one great art of conversation. He is not a fool who knows when to hold his tongue and a person may gain credit for sense, eloquence, wit, who merely says nothing to lessen the opinion which others have of these qualities in themselves.
William Hazlitt
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There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself.
William Hazlitt
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Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.
William Hazlitt