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We have more faith in a well-written romance while we are reading it than in common history. The vividness of the representations in the one case more than counterbalances the mere knowledge of the truth of facts in the other.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Wells
Written
Well
Reading
Vividness
Knowledge
Representations
Common
Representation
Faith
Romance
History
Mere
Facts
Case
Truth
Cases

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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We are governed by sympathy and the extent of our sympathy is determined by that of our sensibility
William Hazlitt
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Those who have had none of the cares of this life to harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to the hopes and fears of the next to vary the prospect before them.
William Hazlitt
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Life is the art of being well deceived.
William Hazlitt
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The look of a gentleman is little else than the reflection of the looks of the world.
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 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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Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.
William Hazlitt
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We learn to curb our will and keep our overt actions within the bounds of humanity, long before we can subdue our sentiments and imaginations to the same mild tone.
William Hazlitt
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Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter, we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.
William Hazlitt
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If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.
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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The multitude who require to be led, still hate their leaders.
William Hazlitt
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One said a tooth drawer was a kind of unconscionable trade, because his trade was nothing else but to take away those things whereby every man gets his living.
William Hazlitt
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Mankind are so ready to bestow their admiration on the dead, because the latter do not hear it, or because it gives no pleasure to the objects of it. Even fame is the offspring of envy.
William Hazlitt
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The devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate he supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him.
William Hazlitt
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The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.
William Hazlitt
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We can scarcely hate anyone that we know.
William Hazlitt
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One said he wondered that leather was not dearer than any other thing. Being demanded a reason: because, saith he, it is more stood upon than any other thing in the world.
William Hazlitt
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The Irish are hearty, the Scotch plausible, the French polite, the Germans good-natured, the Italians courtly, the Spaniards reserved and decorous - the English alone seem to exist in taking and giving offense.
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