Quote

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.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Taking
Illustrated
Saying
Subtlety
Feeling
Atoms
Understanding
Solid
Feelings
Consists
Truth
Distinction
Might
Points
Made
Air
Acuteness

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident wit is the product of art and fancy.
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Human life may be regarded as a succession of frontispieces. The way to be satisfied is never to look back.
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The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.
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The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.
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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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The love of liberty is the love of others the love of power is the love of ourselves.
William Hazlitt
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The soil of friendship is worn out with constant use. Habit may still attach us to each other, but we feel ourselves fettered by it. Old friends might be compared to old married people without the tie of children.
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A felon could plead benefit of clergy and be saved by [reading aloud] what was aptly enough termed the neck verse, which was very usually the Miserere mei of Psalm 51.
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The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.
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Asleep, nobody is a hypocrite
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Those people who are always improving never become great. Greatness is an eminence, the ascent to which is steep and lofty, and which a man must seize on at once by natural boldness and vigor, and not by patient, wary steps.
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To impress the idea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it.
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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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Landscape painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy.
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To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.
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To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.
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The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.
William Hazlitt
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Good temper is one of the great preservers of the features.
William Hazlitt
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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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Wonder at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.
William Hazlitt