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...greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into itself.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Littleness
Shrinks
Greatness
Dignity

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Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity.
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Walk groundly, talk profoundly, drink roundly, sleep soundly.
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Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it.
William Hazlitt
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Prejudice is the child of ignorance.
William Hazlitt
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Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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Elegance is something more than ease it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling, spirited yet delicate.
William Hazlitt
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People are not soured by misfortune, but by the reception they meet with in it.
William Hazlitt
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It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed every one is at a play.
William Hazlitt
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When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
William Hazlitt
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It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.
William Hazlitt
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Humour is the making others act or talk absurdly and unconsciously wit is the pointing out and ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more or less ill-nature.
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Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.
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.
William Hazlitt
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A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.
William Hazlitt
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We prefer a person with vivacity and high spirits, though bordering upon insolence, to the timid and pusillanimous we are fonder of wit joined to malice than of dullness without it.
William Hazlitt
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Whatever interests is interesting.
William Hazlitt
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The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading while we are young. I have had as much of this pleasure perhaps as any one.
William Hazlitt
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Genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength.
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