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

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.
William Hazlitt
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People do not persist in their vices because they are not weary of them, but because they cannot leave them off. It is the nature of vice to leave us no resource but in itself.
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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Popularity disarms envy in well-disposed minds. Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others who feel that the world has done them justice. When success has not this effect in opening the mind, it is a sign that it has been ill deserved.
William Hazlitt
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Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength. There is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage.
William Hazlitt
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A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.
William Hazlitt
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To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
William Hazlitt
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The history of mankind is a romance, a mask, a tragedy, constructed upon the principles of POETICAL JUSTICE it is a noble or royal hunt, in which what is sport to the few is death to the many, and in which the spectators halloo and encourage the strong to set upon the weak, and cry havoc in the chase, though they do not share in the spoil.
William Hazlitt
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Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not, and to do what we cannot.
William Hazlitt
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The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.
William Hazlitt
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In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide from feeling, and not from reason. If we were obliged to enter into a theoretical deliberation on every occasion before we act, life would be at a stand, and Art would be impracticable.
William Hazlitt
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A man in love prefers his passion to every other consideration, and is fonder of his mistress than he is of virtue. Should she prove vicious, she makes vice lovely in his eyes.
William Hazlitt
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Asleep, nobody is a hypocrite
William Hazlitt
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While we desire, we do not enjoy and with enjoyment desire ceases.
William Hazlitt
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They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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The best way to make ourselves agreeable to others is by seeming to think them so. If we appear fully sensible of their good qualities they will not complain of the want of them in us.
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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Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.
William Hazlitt
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Experience makes us wise.
William Hazlitt