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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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Diffidence and awkwardness are antidotes to love.
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We may be willing to tell a story twice, never to hear it more than once.
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The present is an age of talkers, and not of doers and the reason is, that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and dote on past achievement.
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Avarice is the miser's dream, as fame is the poet's.
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He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.
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It is well there is no one without fault for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to s different species.
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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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Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.
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Liberty is the only true riches: of all the rest we are at once the masters and the slaves.
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Wrong dressed out in pride, pomp, and circumstance has more attraction than abstract right.
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Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do.
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The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.
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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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The perfect joys of heaven do not satisfy the cravings of nature.
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A man who does not endeavour to seem more than he is will generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention to fashion is necessary.
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A distinction has been made between acuteness and subtlety of understanding. This might be illustrated by saying that acuteness consists in taking up the points or solid atoms, subtlety in feeling the air of truth.
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To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
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Life is the art of being well deceived.
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The great requisite for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination.
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Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs.
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