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A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer - that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
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Whig
Politics
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More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Human life may be regarded as a succession of frontispieces. The way to be satisfied is never to look back.
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We trifle with, make sport of, and despise those who are attached to us, and follow those that fly from us.
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The multitude who require to be led, still hate their leaders.
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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.
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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.
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When I take up a book I have read before, I know what to expect the satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. I shake hands with, and look our old tried and valued friend in the face,--compare notes and chat the hour away.
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The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it.
William Hazlitt
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Those only deserve a monument who do not need one.
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Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.
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An honest man is respected by all parties.
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The vices are never so well employed as in combating one another.
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No really great man ever thought himself so.
William Hazlitt
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Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.
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No truly great person ever thought themselves so.
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Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others!
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Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not enough that a man has great power in himself, he must shew it to all the world in a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid.
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We prefer ourselves to others, only because we a have more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person's.
William Hazlitt
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We judge of others for the most part by their good opinion of themselves yet nothing gives such offense or creates so many enemies, as that extreme self-complacency or superciliousness of manner, which appears to set the opinion of every one else at defiance.
William Hazlitt
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Languages happily restrict the mind to what is of its own native growth and fitted for it, as rivers and mountains bond countries or the empire of learning, as well as states, would become unwieldy and overgrown.
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