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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.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Lying
Opinions
Disbelieve
Faces
Instant
Palpable
Truth
Tells
Contradict
Power
Dare
Uttered
Persons
Effect
Boldly
Person
Effects
Falsehood
Opinion
Sympathy
Face
Hardly

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The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors.
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Painters... are the most lively observers of what passes in the world about them, and the closest observers of what passes in their own minds.
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The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science is the desire to accept false causes rather than none or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
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There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.
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A great man la an abstraction of some one excellence but whoever fancies himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of excellence or defect of himself or others.
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Political truth is libel religious truth, blasphemy.
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The great requisite for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination.
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We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically.
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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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Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.
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Man is a poetical animal, and delights in fiction.
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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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The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.
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A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof.
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The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.
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The greatest reverses of fortune are the most easily borne from a sort of dignity belonging to them.
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Avarice is the miser's dream, as fame is the poet's.
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The fear of approaching death, which in youth we imagine must cause inquietude to the aged, is very seldom the source of much uneasiness.
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The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.
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Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman dignity is proper to noblemen and majesty to kings.
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