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If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Wished
Mankind
Society
Peace
Might
Right
Long

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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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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The assumption of merit is easier, less embarrassing, and more effectual than the actual attainment of it.
William Hazlitt
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Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.
William Hazlitt
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The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way ... an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.
William Hazlitt
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Envy is the deformed and distorted offspring of egotism and when we reflect on the strange and disproportioned character of the parent, we cannot wonder at the perversity and waywardness of the child.
William Hazlitt
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Abuse is an indirect species of homage.
William Hazlitt
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Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood.
William Hazlitt
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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!
William Hazlitt
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Old friendships are like meats served up repeatedly, cold, comfortless, and distasteful. The stomach turns against them.
William Hazlitt
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Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
William Hazlitt
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Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.
William Hazlitt
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Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination.
William Hazlitt
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Wonder at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.
William Hazlitt
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One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey but I like to go by myself.
William Hazlitt
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Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.
William Hazlitt
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It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.
William Hazlitt
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To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt