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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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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Integrity
Agreeable
Wrong
Constitutional
Idea
Preference
True
Unable
Ideas
Distinction
Nothing
Mad
Right
Likely
Men
Drive
Obstinate

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There is a quiet repose and steadiness about the happiness of age, if the life has been well spent. Its feebleness is not painful. The nervous system has lost its acuteness. But, in mature years we feel that a burn, a scald, a cut, is more tolerable than it was in the sensitive period of youth.
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Grace in women has more effect than beauty.
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The diffusion of taste is not the same thing as the improvement of taste.
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Diffidence and awkwardness are antidotes to love.
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Whatever interests is interesting.
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No really great man ever thought himself so.
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Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.
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Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.
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No man can thoroughly master more than one art or science.
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We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.
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Anyone who has passed though the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.
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The soil of friendship is worn out with constant use. Habit may still attach us to each other, but we feel ourselves fettered by it. Old friends might be compared to old married people without the tie of children.
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It is better to desire than to enjoy, to love than to be loved.
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The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.
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As we advance in life, we acquire a keener sense of the value of time. Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence and we become misers in this respect.
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I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.
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We judge of others for the most part by their good opinion of themselves yet nothing gives such offense or creates so many enemies, as that extreme self-complacency or superciliousness of manner, which appears to set the opinion of every one else at defiance.
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Whatever excites the spirit of contradiction is capable of producing the last effects of heroism which is only the highest pitch of obstinacy, in a good or bad cause, in wisdom or folly.
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Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.
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Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others, who feel that the world has done them justice.
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