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Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Overtaken
Gentility
Vulgarity
Afraid
Fashion
Running
Away

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People are not soured by misfortune, but by the reception they meet with in it.
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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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A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill, which are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or trophy of themselves without them
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Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.
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We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
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The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.
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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.
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It might be argued, that to be a knave is the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary to be a learned man.
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We have more faith in a well-written romance while we are reading it than in common history. The vividness of the representations in the one case more than counterbalances the mere knowledge of the truth of facts in the other.
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Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.
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The worst old age is that of the mind.
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The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.
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I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.
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We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically.
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A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.
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No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
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Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.
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The devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate he supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him.
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One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey but I like to go by myself.
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Painting gives the object itself poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it.
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