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Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Always
Improving
Eminence
Never
Patient
Wary
Men
Greatness
Ascent
People
Steps
Steep
Natural
Boldness
Become
Seize
Must
Vigor
Great
Lofty

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An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.
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Lying is the strongest acknowledgement of the force of truth.
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We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
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It is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying on itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things.
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True friendship is self-love at second hand where, as in a flattering mirror we may see our virtues magnified and our errors softened, and where we may fancy our opinion of ourselves confirmed by an impartial and faithful witness.
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Words are the only things that last for ever.
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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.
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If we use no ceremony towards others, we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect.
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A man is a hypocrite only when he affects to take a delight in what he does not feel, not because he takes a perverse delight in opposite things.
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It is a false principle that because we are entirely occupied with ourselves, we must equally occupy the thoughts of others. The contrary inference is the fair one.
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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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Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.
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Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.
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The fear of approaching death, which in youth we imagine must cause inquietude to the aged, is very seldom the source of much uneasiness.
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But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.
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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.
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The public have neither shame or gratitude.
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