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An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Hardly
Gets
Beyond
Doe
Commonplaces
Hearers
Orator
Orators
Commonplace

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense a substitute for true knowledge.
William Hazlitt
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While we desire, we do not enjoy and with enjoyment desire ceases.
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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Time,--the most independent of all things.
William Hazlitt
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Avarice is the miser's dream, as fame is the poet's.
William Hazlitt
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Those who have the largest hearts have the soundest understandings and they are the truest philosophers who can forget themselves.
William Hazlitt
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The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.
William Hazlitt
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Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit -- or a mask. . . . The foregoing maxim shows the difference between truth and sarcasm.
William Hazlitt
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To die is only to be as we were before we were born yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance, in contemplating this last idea.
William Hazlitt
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Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman dignity is proper to noblemen and majesty to kings.
William Hazlitt
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To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.
William Hazlitt
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Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both.
William Hazlitt
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Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.
William Hazlitt
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Prejudice is never easy unless it can pass itself off for reason.
William Hazlitt
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People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.
William Hazlitt
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The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.
William Hazlitt
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Without life there can be no action — no objects of pursuit — no restless desires — no tormenting passions. Hence it is that we fondly cling to it — that we dread its termination as the close, not of enjoyment, but of hope.
William Hazlitt
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Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.
William Hazlitt