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Mankind are a herd of knaves and fools. It is necessary to join the crowd, or get out of their way, in order not to be trampled to death by them.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Crowds
Trampled
Necessary
Knaves
Fool
Herd
Mankind
Herds
Death
Fools
Order
Join
Way
Crowd
Stupidity

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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What passes in the world for talent or dexterity or enterprise is often only a want of moral principle. We may succeed where others fail, not from a greater share of invention, but from not being nice in the choice of expedients.
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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?
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Experience makes us wise.
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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.
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Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had and have no wish for.
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The assumption of merit is easier, less embarrassing, and more effectual than the actual attainment of it.
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The worst old age is that of the mind.
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I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth... I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them.
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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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I am always afraid of a fool. One cannot be sure that he is not a knave as well.
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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.
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There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.
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To impress the idea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it.
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Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident wit is the product of art and fancy.
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The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others.
William Hazlitt
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If we use no ceremony towards others, we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect.
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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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Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself.
William Hazlitt
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No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.
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To great evils we submit, we resent little provocations.
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