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The insolence of the vulgar is in proportion to their ignorance. They treat everything with contempt which they do not understand.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Ignorance
Understand
Everything
Insolence
Vulgar
Contempt
Proportion
Treat
Treats

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Books are a world in themselves, it is true but they are not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it.
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We are all of us, more or less, the slaves of opinion.
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I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it.
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Mankind are so ready to bestow their admiration on the dead, because the latter do not hear it, or because it gives no pleasure to the objects of it. Even fame is the offspring of envy.
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Wonder at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.
William Hazlitt
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Do not quarrel with the world too soon for, bad as it may be, it is the best we have to live in, here. If railing would have made it better, it would have been reformed long ago.
William Hazlitt
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The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.
William Hazlitt
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Landscape painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy.
William Hazlitt
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A woman's vanity is interested in making the object of her choice the god of her idolatry.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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Man is an intellectual animal, and therefore an everlasting contradiction to himself. His senses centre in himself, his ideas reach to the ends of the universe so that he is torn in pieces between the two, without a possibility of its ever being otherwise.
William Hazlitt
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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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Persons of slender intellectual stamina dread competition, as dwarfs are afraid of being run over in the street.
William Hazlitt
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He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.
William Hazlitt
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So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.
William Hazlitt
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Political truth is libel religious truth, blasphemy.
William Hazlitt
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The present is an age of talkers, and not of doers and the reason is, that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and dote on past achievement.
William Hazlitt
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We are fonder of visiting our friends in health than in sickness. We judge less favorably of their characters when any misfortune happens to them and a lucky hit, either in business or reputation, improves even their personal appearance in our eyes.
William Hazlitt
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Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for - they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood?
William Hazlitt
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One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed.
William Hazlitt