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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
Men
Greatness
Ascent
People
Steps
Steep
Natural
Boldness
Become
Seize
Must
Vigor
Great
Lofty
Always
Improving
Eminence
Never
Patient
Wary

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Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had and have no wish for.
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One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.
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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.
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Good temper is an estate for life.
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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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Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.
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Poverty is the test of civility and the touchstone of friendship.
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Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident wit is the product of art and fancy.
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Death puts an end to rivalship and competition. The dead can boast no advantage over us, nor can we triumph over them.
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We are governed by sympathy and the extent of our sympathy is determined by that of our sensibility
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To the proud the slightest repulse or disappointment is the last indignity.
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Every one in a crowd has the power to throw dirt none out of ten have the inclination.
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The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.
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In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide from feeling, and not from reason. If we were obliged to enter into a theoretical deliberation on every occasion before we act, life would be at a stand, and Art would be impracticable.
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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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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.
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