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The essence of poetry is will and passion.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Essence
Poetry
Passion

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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As we are poetical in our natures, so we delight in fable.
William Hazlitt
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Violence ever defeats its own ends. Where you cannot drive you can always persuade. A gentle word, a kind look, a god-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles. There is a secret pride in every human heart than revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.
William Hazlitt
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Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may, he will only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.
William Hazlitt
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I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began.
William Hazlitt
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The assumption of merit is easier, less embarrassing, and more effectual than the actual attainment of it.
William Hazlitt
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We may be willing to tell a story twice, never to hear it more than once.
William Hazlitt
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The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.
William Hazlitt
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It is only necessary to raise a bugbear before the English imagination in order to govern it at will. Whatever they hate or fear, they implicitly believe in, merely from the scope it gives to these passions.
William Hazlitt
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The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.
William Hazlitt
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There is no flattery so adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent.
William Hazlitt
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The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to ranking spleen and bigotry it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness.
William Hazlitt
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We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.
William Hazlitt
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Those only deserve a monument who do not need one.
William Hazlitt
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There is an unseemly exposure of the mind, as well as of the body.
William Hazlitt
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But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.
William Hazlitt
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Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, which never surfeits. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust. Hatred alone is immortal.
William Hazlitt
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To speak highly of one with whom we are intimate is a species of egotism. Our modesty as well as our jealousy teaches us caution on this subject.
William Hazlitt
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Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?
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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It is easier taking the beaten path than making our way over bogs and precipices. The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information.
William Hazlitt