Quote

In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Originals
Doubtful
Firsts
Original
Afterwards
First
Direction
Speculation
Take
Views
Originality
Mind
Courses
Exploring
Course
Follows
Water
Drop
Hesitates
Strikes
Tracts
True

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Despair swallows up cowardice.
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The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it.
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Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) - neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.
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Vice, like disease, floats in the atmosphere.
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I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it who sees at once what is to be done in given circumstances and does it. He does not beat about the bush for difficulties or excuses, but goes the shortest and most effectual way to work to attain his own ends, or to accomplish a useful object.
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Well I've had a happy life.
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The corpse of friendship is not worth embalming.
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A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the great springs of life, hope and fear.
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The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favor.
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The essence of poetry is will and passion.
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The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men.
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The affected modesty of most women is a decoy for the generous, the delicate, and unsuspecting while the artful, the bold, and unfeeling either see or break through its slender disguises.
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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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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.
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Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.
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But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.
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A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.
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We may be willing to tell a story twice, never to hear it more than once.
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To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead.
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There is no flattery so adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent.
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