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It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Else
Able
Better
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Neither
Education
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More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Genius is native to the soil where it grows — is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun — and is not a hot - house plant or an exotic.
William Hazlitt
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There is room enough in human life to crowd almost every art and science in it. If we pass no day without a line-visit no place without the company of a book-we may with ease fill libraries or empty them of their contents. The more we do, the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.
William Hazlitt
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In public speaking, we must appeal either to the prejudices of others, or to the love of truth and justice. If we think merely of displaying our own ability, we shall ruin every cause we undertake.
William Hazlitt
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It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, anymore than they grow stronger or healthier or honest.
William Hazlitt
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Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.
William Hazlitt
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Those who object to wit are envious of it.
William Hazlitt
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The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame.
William Hazlitt
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No truly great person ever thought themselves so.
William Hazlitt
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Learning is its own exceeding great reward.
William Hazlitt
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Those who have the largest hearts have the soundest understandings and they are the truest philosophers who can forget themselves.
William Hazlitt
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To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.
William Hazlitt
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The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.
William Hazlitt
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No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
William Hazlitt
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Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.
William Hazlitt
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Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.
William Hazlitt
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No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.
William Hazlitt
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When the imagination is continually led to the brink of vice by a system of terror and denunciations, people fling themselves over the precipice from the mere dread of falling.
William Hazlitt
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A felon could plead benefit of clergy and be saved by [reading aloud] what was aptly enough termed the neck verse, which was very usually the Miserere mei of Psalm 51.
William Hazlitt
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The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.
William Hazlitt
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Silence is one great art of conversation.
William Hazlitt