Quote

Elegance is something more than ease it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling, spirited yet delicate.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Restraint
Awkwardness
Delicate
Sparkling
Ease
Spirited
Freedom
Precision
Something
Implies
Conceive
Polish
Elegance

More quotes by 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.
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The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favor.
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Violence ever defeats its own ends. Where you cannot drive you can always persuade. A gentle word, a kind look, a god-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles. There is a secret pride in every human heart than revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.
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Good temper is one of the great preservers of the features.
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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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Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.
William Hazlitt
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Books are a world in themselves, it is true but they are not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it.
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You are never tired of painting, because you have to set down not what you know already, but what you have just discovered.
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There are some persons who never succeed from being too indolent to undertake anything and others who regularly fail, because the instant they find success in their power, they grow indifferent, and give over the attempt.
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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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If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.
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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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The soul of dispatch is decision.
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But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.
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An honest man is respected by all parties.
William Hazlitt
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The only true retirement is that of the heart the only true leisure is the repose of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference whether they are young or old and they die as they have lived, with graceful resignation.
William Hazlitt
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A King (as such) is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own.
William Hazlitt
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Poverty is the test of civility and the touchstone of friendship.
William Hazlitt
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I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it who sees at once what is to be done in given circumstances and does it. He does not beat about the bush for difficulties or excuses, but goes the shortest and most effectual way to work to attain his own ends, or to accomplish a useful object.
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There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.
William Hazlitt