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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
Judgment
Exercise
Public
Prevents
Idea
Spell
Ideas
Spells
Ever
Wit
Think
Acts
Thinking
Private

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Wherever the Government does not emanate...from the people, the principle of the Government, the esprit de corps, the point of honour, in all those connected with it, and raised by it to privileges above the law and above humanity, will be hatred to the people.
William Hazlitt
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There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.
William Hazlitt
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We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.
William Hazlitt
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Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.
William Hazlitt
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We learn to curb our will and keep our overt actions within the bounds of humanity, long before we can subdue our sentiments and imaginations to the same mild tone.
William Hazlitt
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Those who have little shall have less, and that those who have much shall take all that others have left.
William Hazlitt
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There is room enough in human life to crowd almost every art and science in it. If we pass no day without a line-visit no place without the company of a book-we may with ease fill libraries or empty them of their contents. The more we do, the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.
William Hazlitt
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Those who object to wit are envious of it.
William Hazlitt
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Shall I faint, now that I have poured out the spirit of my mind to the world, and treated many subjects with truth, with freedom, with power, because I have been followed with one cry of abuse ever since for not being a Government tool?
William Hazlitt
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Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense a substitute for true knowledge.
William Hazlitt
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A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.
William Hazlitt
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What is popular is not necessarily vulgar and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.
William Hazlitt
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Experience makes us wise.
William Hazlitt
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We are thankful for good-will rather than for services, for the motive than the quantum of favor received.
William Hazlitt
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Familiarity confounds all traits of distinction interest and prejudice take away the power of judging.
William Hazlitt
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Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
William Hazlitt
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It is better to desire than to enjoy, to love than to be loved.
William Hazlitt
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Languages happily restrict the mind to what is of its own native growth and fitted for it, as rivers and mountains bond countries or the empire of learning, as well as states, would become unwieldy and overgrown.
William Hazlitt
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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter, we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.
William Hazlitt
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Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood.
William Hazlitt