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Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry and it is a voluntary power, while genius is involuntary.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Talent
Power
Involuntary
Anything
Voluntary
Application
Capacity
Depends
Genius
Industry

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.
William Hazlitt
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The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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Asleep, nobody is a hypocrite
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.
William Hazlitt
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By despising all that has preceded us, we teach others to despise ourselves.
William Hazlitt
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We all wear some disguise, make some professions, use some artifice, to set ourselves off as being better than we are and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom.
William Hazlitt
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The seat of knowledge is in the head of wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong, if we do not feel right.
William Hazlitt
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We trifle with, make sport of, and despise those who are attached to us, and follow those that fly from us.
William Hazlitt
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A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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Knowledge is pleasure as well as power.
William Hazlitt
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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.
William Hazlitt
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Vanity does not refer to the opinion a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to entertain of him.
William Hazlitt
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It is easier taking the beaten path than making our way over bogs and precipices. The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information.
William Hazlitt
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The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.
William Hazlitt
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The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously, and those who have produced immortal works have done so without knowing how or why.
William Hazlitt