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The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Office
Weaknesses
Virtue
Confession
Less
Modesty
Thought
Sincerity
Seems
Virtues
Savors
Good
Honesty
Thankless
People
Weakness
Ostentation
Failing
Failings

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.
William Hazlitt
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There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.
William Hazlitt
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The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.
William Hazlitt
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A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.
William Hazlitt
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There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!
William Hazlitt
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Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.
William Hazlitt
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The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men.
William Hazlitt
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They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity.
William Hazlitt
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A man in love prefers his passion to every other consideration, and is fonder of his mistress than he is of virtue. Should she prove vicious, she makes vice lovely in his eyes.
William Hazlitt
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Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.
William Hazlitt
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Silence is one great art of conversation.
William Hazlitt
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I am proud up to the point of equality everything above or below that appears to me arrant impertinence or abject meanness.
William Hazlitt
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Popularity disarms envy in well-disposed minds. Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others who feel that the world has done them justice. When success has not this effect in opening the mind, it is a sign that it has been ill deserved.
William Hazlitt
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The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.
William Hazlitt
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The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.
William Hazlitt
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As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.
William Hazlitt
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That which anyone has been long learning unwillingly, he unlearns with proportional eagerness and haste.
William Hazlitt
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The look of a gentleman is little else than the reflection of the looks of the world.
William Hazlitt