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The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Sensible
Things
Men
Distinction
World
Arguing
Cobweb
People
Mets
Cobwebs
Instead
Distinctions
Ought
Spinning
Society
Argue
Business

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I can enjoy society in a room but out of doors, nature is company enough for me
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Time,--the most independent of all things.
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We can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home!
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As we advance in life, we acquire a keener sense of the value of time. Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence and we become misers in this respect.
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No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
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Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity.
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Keep your misfortunes to yourself.
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It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, anymore than they grow stronger or healthier or honest.
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The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass to their daily affairs and experience to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.
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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.
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To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said.
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A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death.
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The wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest yearning after happiness and to desire is in some sense to enjoy.
William Hazlitt
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I am then never less alone than when alone
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Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him.
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We had rather do anything than acknowledge the merit of another if we can help it. We cannot bear a superior or an equal. Hence ridicule is sure to prevail over truth, for the malice of mankind, thrown into the scale, gives the casting weight.
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If our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as little note of them as the dial does of those that are clouded.
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A man who is determined never to move out of the beaten road cannot lose his way.
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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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Dandyism is a variety of genius.
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