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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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Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The learned are mere literary drudges.
William Hazlitt
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Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect.
William Hazlitt
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Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.
William Hazlitt
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Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others!
William Hazlitt
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It is well there is no one without fault for he would not have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to s different species.
William Hazlitt
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The greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief.
William Hazlitt
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A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death.
William Hazlitt
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To speak highly of one with whom we are intimate is a species of egotism. Our modesty as well as our jealousy teaches us caution on this subject.
William Hazlitt
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Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.
William Hazlitt
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You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion.
William Hazlitt
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Asleep, nobody is a hypocrite
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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A felon could plead benefit of clergy and be saved by [reading aloud] what was aptly enough termed the neck verse, which was very usually the Miserere mei of Psalm 51.
William Hazlitt
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I am proud up to the point of equality everything above or below that appears to me arrant impertinence or abject meanness.
William Hazlitt
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Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.
William Hazlitt
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Abuse is an indirect species of homage.
William Hazlitt
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The humblest painter is a true scholar and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.
William Hazlitt
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Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.
William Hazlitt
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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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The public is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice.
William Hazlitt