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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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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Often
Failing
Dexterity
Others
Talent
Passes
May
Principles
Enterprise
World
Share
Invention
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Principle
Nice
Fail
Greater
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Moral
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Expedients

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One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.
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Men of the greatest genius are not always the most prodigal of their encomiums. But then it is when their range of power is confined, and they have in fact little perception, except of their own particular kind of excellence.
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They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
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The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud.
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The smallest pain in our little finger gives us more concern than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.
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There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. I count only the hours that are serene..
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There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.
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It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.
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Anyone is to be pitied who has just sense enough to perceive his deficiencies.
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A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.
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Let a man's talents or virtues be what they may, he will only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.
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The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.
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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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The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.
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We grow tired of ourselves, much more of other people.
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Refinement creates beauty everywhere. It is the grossness of the spectator that discovers anything like grossness in the object.
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A woman's vanity is interested in making the object of her choice the god of her idolatry.
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Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.
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The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.
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