Quote

Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Creates
Object
Everywhere
Objects
Grossness
Beauty
Spectator
Anything
Discovers
Like
Refinement
Spectators

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it.
William Hazlitt
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The last sort I shall mention are verbal critics - mere word-catchers, fellows that pick out a word in a sentence and a sentence in a volume, and tell you it is wrong. The title of Ultra-Crepidarian critics has been given to a variety of this species.
William Hazlitt
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Despair swallows up cowardice.
William Hazlitt
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Horus non numero nisi serenas (I count only the sunny hours).
William Hazlitt
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Common sense, to most people, is nothing more than their own opinions.
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Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken
William Hazlitt
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He who lives wisely to himself and his own heart looks at the busy world through the loopholes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray.
William Hazlitt
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Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.
William Hazlitt
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There is no flattery so adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent.
William Hazlitt
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What I mean by living to one's self is living in the world, as in it, not of it.
William Hazlitt
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It is a false principle that because we are entirely occupied with ourselves, we must equally occupy the thoughts of others. The contrary inference is the fair one.
William Hazlitt
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Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.
William Hazlitt
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Every one in a crowd has the power to throw dirt none out of ten have the inclination.
William Hazlitt
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Fashion constantly begins and ends in the two things it abhors most, singularity and vulgarity.
William Hazlitt
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What passes in the world for talent or dexterity or enterprise is often only a want of moral principle. We may succeed where others fail, not from a greater share of invention, but from not being nice in the choice of expedients.
William Hazlitt
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The more we do, the more we can do.
William Hazlitt
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The corpse of friendship is not worth embalming.
William Hazlitt
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The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.
William Hazlitt
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The rule for traveling abroad is to take our common sense with us, and leave our prejudices behind.
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