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To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.

William Hazlitt

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William Hazlitt
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Painter
Philosopher
Writer
Wm. Haslett
William Carew Hazlitt
Nothing
Display
Great
Powers
Greatness
Unless
Greatest
Purpose
Makes
Applied
Character
Purposes

More quotes by William Hazlitt

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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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Habitual liars invent falsehoods not to gain any end or even to deceive their hearers, but to amuse themselves. It is partly practice and partly habit. It requires an effort in them to speak truth.
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There are no rules for friendship. It must be left to itself. We cannot force it any more than love.
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The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.
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The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.
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When we forget old friends, it is a sign we have forgotten ourselves.
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General principles are not the less true or important because from their nature they elude immediate observation they are like the air, which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it.
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Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.
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Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense a substitute for true knowledge.
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The English (it must be owned) are rather a foul-mouthed nation.
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Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.
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If we are long absent from our friends, we forget them if we are constantly with them, we despise them.
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There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amends for everything. To be young is to be as one of the Immortals.
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Like a rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of going home, or that it will soon be night.
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It is a false principle that because we are entirely occupied with ourselves, we must equally occupy the thoughts of others. The contrary inference is the fair one.
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It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.
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Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.
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Affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body.
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There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation.
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Indolence is a delightful but distressing state we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.
William Hazlitt