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We had rather do anything than acknowledge the merit of another if we can help it. We cannot bear a superior or an equal. Hence ridicule is sure to prevail over truth, for the malice of mankind, thrown into the scale, gives the casting weight.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Giving
Sure
Acknowledge
Casting
Help
Envy
Hence
Rather
Bear
Superior
Helping
Bears
Scale
Another
Weight
Superiors
Cannot
Equal
Scales
Prevail
Truth
Mankind
Merit
Malice
Anything
Gives
Thrown
Ridicule

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I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth... I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them.
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Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.
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Our contempt for others proves nothing but the illiberality and narrowness of our own views.
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The worst old age is that of the mind.
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There cannot be a surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel.
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We prefer ourselves to others, only because we a have more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person's.
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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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To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead.
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Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.
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Without life there can be no action — no objects of pursuit — no restless desires — no tormenting passions. Hence it is that we fondly cling to it — that we dread its termination as the close, not of enjoyment, but of hope.
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Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.
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Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.
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If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.
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We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.
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He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.
William Hazlitt
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Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?
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Truth from the mouth of an honest man and severity from a good-natured man have a double effect.
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The great requisite for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination.
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Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
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Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.
William Hazlitt