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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.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Proof
Lows
Genteel
Talking
Gentility
Cannot
Surer
Always
Meanness
Thinking
Innate
Origin
Disposition

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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In public speaking, we must appeal either to the prejudices of others, or to the love of truth and justice. If we think merely of displaying our own ability, we shall ruin every cause we undertake.
William Hazlitt
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There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.
William Hazlitt
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We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts.
William Hazlitt
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When the imagination is continually led to the brink of vice by a system of terror and denunciations, people fling themselves over the precipice from the mere dread of falling.
William Hazlitt
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The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.
William Hazlitt
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By retaliating our sufferings on the heads of those we love, we get rid of a present uneasiness and incur lasting remorse. With the accomplishment of our revenge our fondness returns so that we feel the injury we have done them, even more than they do.
William Hazlitt
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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter, we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.
William Hazlitt
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I am then never less alone than when alone
William Hazlitt
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Prosperity is a great teacher adversity a greater.
William Hazlitt
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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
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He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves.
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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Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.
William Hazlitt
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The public is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice.
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
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Our lives are ruled by impermanence. The challenge is how to create something of enduring value within the context of our impermanent lives. Soka Gakkai Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
William Hazlitt
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To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous.
William Hazlitt
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Good temper is an estate for life.
William Hazlitt