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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
Facts
Case
Truth
Cases
Wells
Written
Well
Reading
Vividness
Knowledge
Representations
Common
Representation
Faith
Romance
History
Mere

More quotes by 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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We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.
William Hazlitt
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The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors.
William Hazlitt
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When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
William Hazlitt
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Popularity is neither fame nor greatness.
William Hazlitt
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The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come.
William Hazlitt
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When one can do better than everyone else in the same walk, one does not make any very painful exertions to outdo oneself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.
William Hazlitt
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Prosperity is a great teacher adversity a greater.
William Hazlitt
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Rules and models destroy genius and art.
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
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We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.
William Hazlitt
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No really great man ever thought himself so.
William Hazlitt
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True modesty and true pride are much the same thing: both consist in setting a just value on ourselves - neither more nor less.
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.
William Hazlitt
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Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, which never surfeits. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust. Hatred alone is immortal.
William Hazlitt
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Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.
William Hazlitt
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No truly great person ever thought themselves so.
William Hazlitt
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A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.
William Hazlitt
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[Science is] the desire to know causes.
William Hazlitt
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There is nothing good to be had in the country, or if there is, they will not let you have it.
William Hazlitt