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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

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Liberty is the only true riches: of all the rest we are at once the masters and the slaves.
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To the proud the slightest repulse or disappointment is the last indignity.
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Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense a substitute for true knowledge.
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We must be doing something to be happy.
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Those who can command themselves command others.
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Cowardice is not synonymous with prudence. It often happens that the better part of discretion is valor.
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A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill, which are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or trophy of themselves without them
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They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
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You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
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He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.
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Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
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Rules and models destroy genius and art.
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We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.
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Every man, in judging of himself, is his own contemporary. He may feel the gale of popularity, but he cannot tell how long it will last. His opinion of himself wants distance, wants time, wants numbers, to set it off and confirm it.
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You are never tired of painting, because you have to set down not what you know already, but what you have just discovered.
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The affected modesty of most women is a decoy for the generous, the delicate, and unsuspecting while the artful, the bold, and unfeeling either see or break through its slender disguises.
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A wise traveler never despises his own country.
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Persons of slender intellectual stamina dread competition, as dwarfs are afraid of being run over in the street.
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The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, No. There was a fire in the room.
William Hazlitt
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Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.
William Hazlitt