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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
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Originals
Doubtful
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Afterwards
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Mind
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More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it.
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Truth from the mouth of an honest man and severity from a good-natured man have a double effect.
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Death cancels everything but truth and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization.
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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.
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The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty.
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The soul of dispatch is decision.
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Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
William Hazlitt
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Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.
William Hazlitt
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Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity.
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The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.
William Hazlitt
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The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.
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Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?
William Hazlitt
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One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey but I like to go by myself.
William Hazlitt
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The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously, and those who have produced immortal works have done so without knowing how or why.
William Hazlitt
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Love at first sight is only realizing an imagination that has always haunted us or meeting with a face, a figure, or cast of expression in perfection that we have seen and admired in a less degree or in less favorable circumstances a hundred times before.
William Hazlitt
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Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass.
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We learn to curb our will and keep our overt actions within the bounds of humanity, long before we can subdue our sentiments and imaginations to the same mild tone.
William Hazlitt
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Painters... are the most lively observers of what passes in the world about them, and the closest observers of what passes in their own minds.
William Hazlitt
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There is a quiet repose and steadiness about the happiness of age, if the life has been well spent. Its feebleness is not painful. The nervous system has lost its acuteness. But, in mature years we feel that a burn, a scald, a cut, is more tolerable than it was in the sensitive period of youth.
William Hazlitt
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The youth is better than the old age of friendship.
William Hazlitt