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The severest critics are always those who have either never attempted, or who have failed in original composition.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Originals
Original
Critics
Either
Always
Severest
Never
Attempted
Composition
Failed

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
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Silence is one great art of conversation. He is not a fool who knows when to hold his tongue and a person may gain credit for sense, eloquence, wit, who merely says nothing to lessen the opinion which others have of these qualities in themselves.
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The discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetness and cement of friendship.
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Habit in most cases hardens and encrusts by taking away the keener edge of our sensations: but does it not in others quicken and refine, by giving a mechanical facility and by engrafting an acquired sense?
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Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.
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Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.
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Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.
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Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to our efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap.
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The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.
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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.
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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.
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Our contempt for others proves nothing but the illiberality and narrowness of our own views.
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They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
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I am always afraid of a fool. One cannot be sure that he is not a knave as well.
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Fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism ... tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute.
William Hazlitt
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The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud.
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One said a tooth drawer was a kind of unconscionable trade, because his trade was nothing else but to take away those things whereby every man gets his living.
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Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves.
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Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.
William Hazlitt
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An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.
William Hazlitt