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Humour is the making others act or talk absurdly and unconsciously wit is the pointing out and ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more or less ill-nature.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Less
Unconsciously
Funny
Consciously
Making
Absurdity
Others
Pointing
Nature
Humour
Wit
Ill
Ridiculing
Talk
Absurdly

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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We judge of others for the most part by their good opinion of themselves yet nothing gives such offense or creates so many enemies, as that extreme self-complacency or superciliousness of manner, which appears to set the opinion of every one else at defiance.
William Hazlitt
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Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart.
William Hazlitt
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A man in love prefers his passion to every other consideration, and is fonder of his mistress than he is of virtue. Should she prove vicious, she makes vice lovely in his eyes.
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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A man is a hypocrite only when he affects to take a delight in what he does not feel, not because he takes a perverse delight in opposite things.
William Hazlitt
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There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things-books, pictures and the face of nature.
William Hazlitt
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Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) - neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.
William Hazlitt
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From the height from which the great look down on the world all the rest of mankind seem equal.
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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The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.
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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There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.
William Hazlitt
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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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No man can thoroughly master more than one art or science.
William Hazlitt
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A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.
William Hazlitt
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Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it.
William Hazlitt
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Men of the greatest genius are not always the most prodigal of their encomiums. But then it is when their range of power is confined, and they have in fact little perception, except of their own particular kind of excellence.
William Hazlitt
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Good temper is an estate for life.
William Hazlitt
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We go on a journey to be free of all impediments to leave ourselves behind much more than to get rid of others
William Hazlitt
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I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it.
William Hazlitt