Quote

When the imagination is continually led to the brink of vice by a system of terror and denunciations, people fling themselves over the precipice from the mere dread of falling.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Imagination
Continually
Fall
Dread
People
Vice
Falling
Vices
Terror
Brink
Mere
Precipice
System
Fling

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A distinction has been made between acuteness and subtlety of understanding. This might be illustrated by saying that acuteness consists in taking up the points or solid atoms, subtlety in feeling the air of truth.
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Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman dignity is proper to noblemen and majesty to kings.
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We prefer a person with vivacity and high spirits, though bordering upon insolence, to the timid and pusillanimous we are fonder of wit joined to malice than of dullness without it.
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That which anyone has been long learning unwillingly, he unlearns with proportional eagerness and haste.
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A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject, excites no interest in any. Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.
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We are not hypocrites in our sleep.
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Grace in women has more effect than beauty.
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One said a tooth drawer was a kind of unconscionable trade, because his trade was nothing else but to take away those things whereby every man gets his living.
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Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.
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Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit -- or a mask. . . . The foregoing maxim shows the difference between truth and sarcasm.
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Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.
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We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.
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Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.
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Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.
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We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
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The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne from a sort of dignity belonging to them.
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Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.
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To-day kings, to-marrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing.
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Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense a substitute for true knowledge.
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The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, No. There was a fire in the room.
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