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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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Speculation
Mind
Views
Originality
Courses
Exploring
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Water
Drop
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Afterwards

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter, we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.
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Rules and models destroy genius and art.
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The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.
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Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism ... tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.
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Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.
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You will hear more good things on the outside of a stagecoach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university.
William Hazlitt
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So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.
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Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself.
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Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.
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I am always afraid of a fool. One cannot be sure that he is not a knave as well.
William Hazlitt
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No young man ever thinks he shall die.
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Features alone do not run in the blood vices and virtues, genius and folly, are transmitted through the same sure but unseen channel.
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.
William Hazlitt
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The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.
William Hazlitt
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Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.
William Hazlitt
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We do not attend to the advice of the sage and experienced because we think they are old, forgetting that they once were young and placed in the same situations as ourselves.
William Hazlitt
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The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.
William Hazlitt
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People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking.
William Hazlitt
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The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.
William Hazlitt
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To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
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