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Those who are pleased with the fewest things know the least, as those who are pleased with everything know nothing.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Pleased
Taste
Least
Everything
Nothing
Things
Fewest

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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The best way to make ourselves agreeable to others is by seeming to think them so. If we appear fully sensible of their good qualities they will not complain of the want of them in us.
William Hazlitt
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Life is the art of being well deceived.
William Hazlitt
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A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dulness by the side of folly looks like wisdom.
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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You are never tired of painting, because you have to set down not what you know already, but what you have just discovered.
William Hazlitt
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We do not die wholly at our deaths: we have mouldered away gradually long before. Faculty after faculty, interest after interest, attachment after attachment disappear: we are torn from ourselves while living.
William Hazlitt
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One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed.
William Hazlitt
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Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as the detecting another in an untruth. It strikes at the root of our confidence ever after.
William Hazlitt
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To-day kings, to-marrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing.
William Hazlitt
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People do not persist in their vices because they are not weary of them, but because they cannot leave them off. It is the nature of vice to leave us no resource but in itself.
William Hazlitt
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Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The learned are mere literary drudges.
William Hazlitt
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A certain excess of animal spirits with thoughtless good-humor will often make more enemies than the most deliberate spite and ill-nature, which is on its guard, and strikes with caution and safety.
William Hazlitt
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We would willingly, and without remorse, sacrifice not only the present moment, but all the interval (no matter how long) that separates us from any favorite object.
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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Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.
William Hazlitt
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The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.
William Hazlitt
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The humblest painter is a true scholar and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.
William Hazlitt
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Our contempt for others proves nothing but the illiberality and narrowness of our own views.
William Hazlitt
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We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically.
William Hazlitt
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Pride goes before a fall, they say, And yet we often find, The folks who throw all pride away Most often fall behind.
William Hazlitt