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A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill, which are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or trophy of themselves without them

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Power
Leaves
Constructs
Without
Greatness
Confined
Terminating
Great
Image
Apply
Trophy
Men
Skills
Display
Displays
World
Player
Skill
Trophies
Effort
Trials
Constitutes
Individual
Permanent
Momentary
Found
Chess
Construct

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
William Hazlitt
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When we forget old friends, it is a sign we have forgotten ourselves.
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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.
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A man who is determined never to move out of the beaten road cannot lose his way.
William Hazlitt
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We grow tired of ourselves, much more of other people.
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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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Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.
William Hazlitt
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Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.
William Hazlitt
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The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men.
William Hazlitt
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I can enjoy society in a room but out of doors, nature is company enough for me
William Hazlitt
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There is nothing more to be esteemed than a manly firmness and decision of character.
William Hazlitt
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When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
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The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.
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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To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.
William Hazlitt
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A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them.
William Hazlitt
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Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.
William Hazlitt
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We would willingly, and without remorse, sacrifice not only the present moment, but all the interval (no matter how long) that separates us from any favorite object.
William Hazlitt
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No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness.
William Hazlitt
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Life is the art of being well deceived and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.
William Hazlitt