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
Fall
Dread
People
Vice
Falling
Vices
Terror
Brink
Mere
Precipice
System
Fling
Imagination
Continually

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People are not soured by misfortune, but by the reception they meet with in it.
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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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Wherever the Government does not emanate...from the people, the principle of the Government, the esprit de corps, the point of honour, in all those connected with it, and raised by it to privileges above the law and above humanity, will be hatred to the people.
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A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.
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Those only deserve a monument who do not need one.
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Believe all the good you can of everyone. Do not measure others by yourself. If they have advantages which you have not, let your liberality keep pace with their good fortune. Envy no one, and you need envy no one.
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To the proud the slightest repulse or disappointment is the last indignity.
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The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way ... an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.
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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.
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Envy is littleness of soul.
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A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof.
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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.
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We are not hypocrites in our sleep.
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The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.
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Every man, in judging of himself, is his own contemporary. He may feel the gale of popularity, but he cannot tell how long it will last. His opinion of himself wants distance, wants time, wants numbers, to set it off and confirm it.
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It is not fit that every man should travel it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
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To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.
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There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.
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