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Whatever excites the spirit of contradiction is capable of producing the last effects of heroism which is only the highest pitch of obstinacy, in a good or bad cause, in wisdom or folly.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Last
Capable
Spirit
Effects
Obstinacy
Good
Highest
Excites
Cause
Pitch
Wisdom
Heroism
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Producing
Whatever
Contradiction
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Folly

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them.
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One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey I can enjoy society in a room but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone.
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A taste for liberal art is necessary to complete the character of a gentleman, Science alone is hard and mechanical. It exercises the understanding upon things out of ourselves, while it leaves the affections unemployed, or engrossed with our own immediate, narrow interests.
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I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it.
William Hazlitt
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The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science is the desire to accept false causes rather than none or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
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Women never reason, and therefore they are (comparatively) seldom wrong.
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The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.
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People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.
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No man can thoroughly master more than one art or science.
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The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.
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Painting gives the object itself poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it.
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No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.
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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.
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The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.
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Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.
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The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud.
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Rules and models destroy genius and art.
William Hazlitt
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To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.
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The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.
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We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.
William Hazlitt