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It Is Only Necessary To Raise A Bugbear Before The English Imagination In Order To Govern It At Will. Whatever They Hate Or Fear, They Implicitly Believe In, Merely From The Scope It Gives To These Passions.

-William Hazlitt

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It Is Only Necessary

William Hazlitt

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It Is Only Necessary To Raise A Bugbear Before The English Imagination In Order To Govern It At Will. Whatever They Hate Or Fear, They Implicitly Believe In, Merely From The Scope It Gives To These Passions.

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An Honest Man Speaks The Truth, Though It May Give Offence; A Vain Man, In Order That It May.

Asleep, Nobody Is A Hypocrite

He Will Never Have True Friends Who Is Afraid Of Making Enemies.

The Love Of Liberty Is The Love Of Others; The Love Of Power Is The Love Of Ourselves.

The World Loves To Be Amused By Hollow Professions, To Be Deceived By Flattering Appearances, To Live In A State Of Hallucination; And Can Forgive Everything But The Plain, Downright, Simple, Honest Truth.

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.

There Is A Heroism In Crime As Well As In Virtue. Vice And Infamy Have Their Altars And Their Religion.

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.

An Accomplished Coquette Excites The Passions Of Others, In Proportion As She Feels None Herself.

Wit Is, In Fact, The Eloquence Of Indifference.

True Friendship Is Self-love At Second-hand.

We Often Choose A Friend As We Do A Mistress - For No Particular Excellence In Themselves, But Merely From Some Circumstance That Flatters Our Self-love.

It Is Essential To The Triumph Of Reform That It Should Never Succeed.

It Might Be Argued, That To Be A Knave Is The Gift Of Fortune, But To Play The Fool To Advantage It Is Necessary To Be A Learned Man.

If Our Hours Were All Serene, We Might Probably Take Almost As Little Note Of Them As The Dial Does Of Those That Are Clouded.

Whatever Excites The Spirit Of Contradiction Is Capable Of Producing The Last Effects Of Heroism; Which Is Only The Highest Pitch Of Obstinacy, In A Good Or Bad Cause, In Wisdom Or Folly.

The Smallest Pain In Our Little Finger Gives Us More Concern Than The Destruction Of Millions Of Our Fellow Beings.

A Man's Reputation Is Not In His Own Keeping, But Lies At The Mercy Of The Profligacy Of Others. Calumny Requires No Proof. The Throwing Out [of] Malicious Imputations Against Any Character Leaves A Stain, Which No After-refutation Can Wipe Out. To Create An Unfavorable Impression, It Is Not Necessary That Certain Things Should Be True, But That They Have Been Said. The Imagination Is Of So Delicate A Texture That Even Words Wound It.

If We Wish To Know The Force Of Human Genius, We Should Read Shakespeare. If We Wish To See The Insignificance Of Human Learning, We May Study His Commentators.

Dandyism Is A Species Of Genius.

To Die Is Only To Be As We Were Before We Were Born; Yet No One Feels Any Remorse, Or Regret, Or Repugnance, In Contemplating This Last Idea.

In Public Speaking, We Must Appeal Either To The Prejudices Of Others, Or To The Love Of Truth And Justice. If We Think Merely Of Displaying Our Own Ability, We Shall Ruin Every Cause We Undertake.

The Art Of Pleasing Consists In Being Pleased.

Life Is The Art Of Being Well Deceived; And In Order That The Deception May Succeed It Must Be Habitual And Uninterrupted.

The Origin Of All Science Is The Desire To Know Causes, And The Origin Of All False Science Is The Desire To Accept False Causes Rather Than None; Or, Which Is The Same Thing, In The Unwillingness To Acknowledge Our Own Ignorance.

One Is Always More Vexed At Losing A Game Of Any Sort By A Single Hole Or Ace, Than If One Has Never Had A Chance Of Winning It.

Love May Turn To Indifference With Possession.

We Would Willingly, And Without Remorse, Sacrifice Not Only The Present Moment, But All The Interval (no Matter How Long) That Separates Us From Any Favorite Object.

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.

Our Energy Is In Proportion To The Resistance It Meets.

What Is Popular Is Not Necessarily Vulgar; And That Which We Try To Rescue From Fatal Obscurity Had In General Much Better Remain Where It Is.

Zeal Will Do More Than Knowledge.

Vanity Does Not Refer To The Opinion A Man Entertains Of Himself, But To That Which He Wishes Others To Entertain Of Him.

A Gentle Word, A Kind Look, A Good-natured Smile Can Work Wonders And Accomplish Miracles.

Language, If It Throws A Veil Over Our Ideas, Adds A Softness And Refinement To Them, Like That Which The Atmosphere Gives To Naked Objects.

Books Are A World In Themselves, It Is True; But They Are Not The Only World. The World Itself Is A Volume Larger Than All The Libraries In It.

Death Cancels Everything But Truth; And Strips A Man Of Everything But Genius And Virtue. It Is A Sort Of Natural Canonization.

In Love We Do Not Think Of Moral Qualities, And Scarcely Of Intellectual Ones. Temperament And Manner Alone, With Beauty, Excite Love.

Genius Only Leaves Behind It The Monuments Of Its Strength.

There Is Room Enough In Human Life To Crowd Almost Every Art And Science In It. If We Pass ""no Day Without A Line""-visit No Place Without The Company Of A Book-we May With Ease Fill Libraries Or Empty Them Of Their Contents. The More We Do, The More Busy We Are, The More Leisure We Have.

No Act Terminating In Itself Constitutes Greatness.

Those Who Are At War With Others Are Not At Peace With Themselves.

Vulgar Prejudices Are Those Which Arise Out Of Accident, Ignorance, Or Authority; Natural Prejudices Are Those Which Arise Out Of The Constitution Of The Human Mind Itself.

No One Ever Approaches Perfection Except By Stealth, And Unknown To Themselves.

Humanity Is To Be Met With In A Den Of Robbers.

We Do Not See Nature With Our Eyes, But With Our Understandings And Our Hearts.

Charity, Like Nature, Abhors A Vacuum. Next To Putting It In A Bank, Men Like To Squander Their Superfluous Wealth On Those To Whom It Is Sure To Be Doing The Least Possible Good.

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.

You Will Hear More Good Things On The Outside Of A Stagecoach From London To Oxford Than If You Were To Pass A Twelvemonth With The Undergraduates, Or Heads Of Colleges, Of That Famous University.

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.

By Retaliating Our Sufferings On The Heads Of Those We Love, We Get Rid Of A Present Uneasiness And Incur Lasting Remorse. With The Accomplishment Of Our Revenge Our Fondness Returns; So That We Feel The Injury We Have Done Them, Even More Than They Do.

The Discussing The Characters And Foibles Of Common Friends Is A Great Sweetness And Cement Of Friendship.

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.

It Is Hard For Any One To Be An Honest Politician Who Is Not Born And Bred A Dissenter.

Dr. Johnson Was A Lazy Learned Man Who Liked To Think And Talk Better Than To Read Or Write; Who, However, Wrote Much And Well, But Too Often By Rote.

There Is An Unseemly Exposure Of The Mind, As Well As Of The Body.

Talent Is The Capacity Of Doing Anything That Depends On Application And Industry And It Is A Voluntary Power, While Genius Is Involuntary.

Wonder At The First Sight Of Works Of Art May Be The Effect Of Ignorance And Novelty; But Real Admiration And Permanent Delight In Them Are The Growth Of Taste And Knowledge.

Comedy Naturally Wears Itself Out - Destroys The Very Food On Which It Lives; And By Constantly And Successfully Exposing The Follies And Weaknesses Of Mankind To Ridicule, In The End Leaves Itself Nothing Worth Laughing At.

Whatever Interests Is Interesting.

From The Height From Which The Great Look Down On The World All The Rest Of Mankind Seem Equal.

Horus Non Numero Nisi Serenas (i Count Only The Sunny Hours).

Power Is Pleasure; And Pleasure Sweetens Pain.

Painting For A Whole Morning Gives One As Excellent An Appetite For One's Dinner, As Old Abraham Tucker Acquired For His By Riding Over Banstead Downs.

Prosperity Is A Great Teacher; Adversity A Greater.

Knowledge Is Pleasure As Well As Power.

We Are All Of Us, More Or Less, The Slaves Of Opinion.

There Is Nothing More Likely To Drive A Man Mad, Than The Being Unable To Get Rid Of The Idea Of The Distinction Between Right And Wrong, And An Obstinate, Constitutional Preference Of The True To The Agreeable.

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.

I Have Known Persons Without A Friend--never Any One Without Some Virtue. The Virtues Of The Former Conspired With Their Vices To Make The Whole World Their Enemies.

The Mind Revolts Against Certain Opinions, As The Stomach Rejects Certain Foods.

Languages Happily Restrict The Mind To What Is Of Its Own Native Growth And Fitted For It, As Rivers And Mountains Bond Countries; Or The Empire Of Learning, As Well As States, Would Become Unwieldy And Overgrown.

His Hypothesis Goes To This - To Make The Common Run Of His Readers Fancy They Can Do All That Can Be Done By Genius, And To Make The Man Of Genius Believe He Can Only Do What Is To Be Done By Mechanical Rules And Systematic Industry. This Is Not A Very Feasible Scheme; Nor Is Sir Joshua Sufficiently Clear And Explicit In His Reasoning In Support Of It.

Without Life There Can Be No Action — No Objects Of Pursuit — No Restless Desires — No Tormenting Passions. Hence It Is That We Fondly Cling To It — That We Dread Its Termination As The Close, Not Of Enjoyment, But Of Hope.

I'm Not Smart, But I Like To Observe. Millions Saw The Apple Fall, But Newton Was The One Who Asked Why.

Though Familiarity May Not Breed Contempt, It Takes Off The Edge Of Admiration.

As We Advance In Life, We Acquire A Keener Sense Of The Value Of Time. Nothing Else, Indeed, Seems Of Any Consequence; And We Become Misers In This Respect.

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.

It Is Not The Passion Of A Mind Struggling With Misfortune, Or The Hopelessness Of Its Desires, But Of A Mind Preying On Itself, And Disgusted With, Or Indifferent To All Other Things.

It Is Better To Desire Than To Enjoy, To Love Than To Be Loved.

The Only Vice That Cannot Be Forgiven Is Hypocrisy. The Repentance Of A Hypocrite Is Itself Hypocrisy.

Truth From The Mouth Of An Honest Man And Severity From A Good-natured Man Have A Double Effect.

The Title Of Ultracrepidarian Critics Has Been Given To Those Persons Who Find Fault With Small And Insignificant Details.

I Like A Friend The Better For Having Faults That One Can Talk About.

He Who Lives Wisely To Himself And His Own Heart Looks At The Busy World Through The Loopholes Of Retreat, And Does Not Want To Mingle In The Fray.

Friendship Is Cemented By Interest, Vanity, Or The Want Of Amusement; It Seldom Implies Esteem, Or Even Mutual Regard.

I Like A Person Who Knows His Own Mind And Sticks To It; Who Sees At Once What Is To Be Done In Given Circumstances And Does It. He Does Not Beat About The Bush For Difficulties Or Excuses, But Goes The Shortest And Most Effectual Way To Work To Attain His Own Ends, Or To Accomplish A Useful Object.

If Goodness Were Only A Theory, It Were A Pity It Should Be Lost To The World. There Are A Number Of Things, The Idea Of Which Is A Clear Gain To The Mind. Let People, For Instance, Rail At Friendship, Genius, Freedom, As Long As They Will -the Very Names Of These Despised Qualities Are Better Than Anything Else That Could Be Substituted For Them, And Embalm Even The Most Envenomed Satire Against Them.

Love And Joy Are Twins Or Born Of Each Other.

A Scholar Is Like A Book Written In A Dead Language. It Is Not Every One That Can Read In It.

The Fear Of Approaching Death, Which In Youth We Imagine Must Cause Inquietude To The Aged, Is Very Seldom The Source Of Much Uneasiness.

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.

To Think Ill Of Mankind And Not Wish Ill To Them, Is Perhaps The Highest Wisdom And Virtue.

The Definition Of Genius Is That It Acts Unconsciously, And Those Who Have Produced Immortal Works Have Done So Without Knowing How Or Why.

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.

A Lively Blockhead In Company Is A Public Benefit. Silence Or Dulness By The Side Of Folly Looks Like Wisdom.

There Is Evil Poured Upon The Earth From The Overflowings Of Corruption-- Sickness, And Poverty, And Pain, And Guilt, And Madness, And Sorrow; But, As The Water From A Fountain Riseth And Sinketh To Its Level, Ceaselessly Toileth Justice To Equalize The Lots Of Men.

The Art Of Life Is To Know How To Enjoy A Little And To Endure Very Much.

Faith Is Necessary To Victory.

That Humanity And Sincerity Which Dispose Men To Resist Injustice And Tyranny Render Them Unfit To Cope With The Cunning And Power Of Those Who Are Opposed To Them. The Friends Of Liberty Trust To The Professions Of Others Because They Are Themselves Sincere, And Endeavour To Secure The Public Good With The Least Possible Hurt To Its Enemies, Who Have No Regard To Anything But Their Own Unprincipled Ends, And Stick At Nothing To Accomplish Them.

The World Dread Nothing So Much As Being Convinced Of Their Errors.

Painting Gives The Object Itself; Poetry What It Implies. Painting Embodies What A Thing Contains In Itself; Poetry Suggests What Exists Out Of It, In Any Manner Connected With It.

Man Is An Intellectual Animal, And Therefore An Everlasting Contradiction To Himself. His Senses Centre In Himself, His Ideas Reach To The Ends Of The Universe; So That He Is Torn In Pieces Between The Two, Without A Possibility Of Its Ever Being Otherwise.

I Do Not Think That What Is Called Love At First Sight Is So Great An Absurdity As It Is Sometimes Imagined To Be. We Generally Make Up Our Minds Beforehand To The Sort Of Person We Should Like, Grave Or Gay, Black, Brown, Or Fair; With Golden Tresses Or Raven Locks; - And When We Meet With A Complete Example Of The Qualities We Admire, The Bargain Is Soon Struck.

A Man Who Does Not Endeavour To Seem More Than He Is Will Generally Be Thought Nothing Of. We Habitually Make Such Large Deductions For Pretence And Imposture That No Real Merit Will Stand Against Them. It Is Necessary To Set Off Our Good Qualities With A Certain Air Of Plausibility And Self-importance, As Some Attention To Fashion Is Necessary.

Learning Is Its Own Exceeding Great Reward.

Our Notions With Respect To The Importance Of Life, And Our Attachment To It, Depend On A Principle Which Has Very Little To Do With Its Happiness Or Its Misery. The Love Of Life Is, In General, The Effect Not Of Our Enjoyments, But Of Our Passions.

Common Sense, To Most People, Is Nothing More Than Their Own Opinions.

The Severest Critics Are Always Those Who Have Either Never Attempted, Or Who Have Failed In Original Composition.

The Affected Modesty Of Most Women Is A Decoy For The Generous, The Delicate, And Unsuspecting; While The Artful, The Bold, And Unfeeling Either See Or Break Through Its Slender Disguises.

Grace Has Been Defined As The Outward Expression Of The Inward Harmony Of The Soul.

Fashion Is Gentility Running Away From Vulgarity And Afraid Of Being Overtaken

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.

Vice, Like Disease, Floats In The Atmosphere.

The Safest Kind Of Praise Is To Foretell That Another Will Become Great In Some Particular Way. It Has The Greatest Show Of Magnanimity And The Least Of It In Reality.

You Are Never Tired Of Painting, Because You Have To Set Down Not What You Know Already, But What You Have Just Discovered.

He Who Does Nothing Renders Himself Incapable Of Doing Any Thing; But While We Are Executing Any Work, We Are Preparing And Qualifying Ourselves To Undertake Another.

The Youth Is Better Than The Old Age Of Friendship.

Cunning Is The Art Of Concealing Our Own Defects, And Discovering Other People's Weaknesses.

To Create An Unfavorable Impression, It Is Not Necessary That Certain Things Should Be True, But That They Have Been Said.

It Is Not Fit That Every Man Should Travel; It Makes A Wise Man Better, And A Fool Worse.

Well I've Had A Happy Life.

As Is Our Confidence, So Is Our Capacity.

Positive Attitude

People Do Not Persist In Their Vices Because They Are Not Weary Of Them, But Because They Cannot Leave Them Off. It Is The Nature Of Vice To Leave Us No Resource But In Itself.

Wrong Dressed Out In Pride, Pomp, And Circumstance Has More Attraction Than Abstract Right.

No Man Can Thoroughly Master More Than One Art Or Science.

If I Have Not Read A Book Before, It Is, For All Intents And Purposes, New To Me Whether It Was Printed Yesterday Or Three Hundred Years Ago.

Words Are The Only Things That Last For Ever.

If We Are Long Absent From Our Friends, We Forget Them; If We Are Constantly With Them, We Despise Them.

Envy Is Littleness Of Soul.

The Best Way To Make Ourselves Agreeable To Others Is By Seeming To Think Them So. If We Appear Fully Sensible Of Their Good Qualities They Will Not Complain Of The Want Of Them In Us.

Cowardice Is Not Synonymous With Prudence. It Often Happens That The Better Part Of Discretion Is Valor.

A Whig Is Properly What Is Called A Trimmer - That Is, A Coward To Both Sides Of The Question, Who Dare Not Be A Knave Nor An Honest Man, But Is A Sort Of Whiffing, Shuffling, Cunning, Silly, Contemptible, Unmeaning Negation Of The Two.

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.

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.

The Contemplation Of Truth And Beauty Is The Proper Object For Which We Were Created, Which Calls Forth The Most Intense Desires Of The Soul, And Of Which It Never Tires.

The Perfect Joys Of Heaven Do Not Satisfy The Cravings Of Nature.

Landscape Painting Is The Obvious Resource Of Misanthropy.

Landscape Painting

Learning Is Its Own Exceeding Great Reward; And At The Period Of Which We Speak, It Bore Other Fruits, Not Unworthy Of It.

Do Not Keep On With A Mockery Of Friendship After The Substance Is Gone - But Part, While You Can Part Friends. Bury The Carcass Of Friendship: It Is Not Worth Embalming.

There Is Nothing More To Be Esteemed Than A Manly Firmness And Decision Of Character.

There Are Persons Who Are Never Easy Unless They Are Putting Your Books And Papers In Order--that Is, According To Their Notions Of The Matter--and Hide Things Lest They Should Be Lost, Where Neither The Owner Nor Anybody Else Can Find Them. This Is A Sort Of Magpie Faculty. If Anything Is Left Where You Want It, It Is Called Litter. There Is A Pedantry In Housewifery, As Well As In The Gravest Concerns. Abraham Tucker Complained That Whenever His Maid Servant Had Been In His Library, He Could Not See Comfortably To Work Again For Several Days.

The Soul Of A Journey Is Liberty, Perfect Liberty, To Think, Feel, Do Just As One Pleases.

Envy Is The Most Universal Passion. We Only Pride Ourselves On The Qualities We Possess, Or Think We Possess; But We Envy The Pretensions We Have, And Those Which We Have Not, And Do Not Even Wish For. We Envy The Greatest Qualities And Every Trifling Advantage. We Envy The Most Ridiculous Appearance Or Affectation Of Superiority. We Envy Folly And Conceit; Nay, We Go So Far As To Envy Whatever Confers Distinction Of Notoriety, Even Vice And Infamy.

To Give A Reason For Anything Is To Breed A Doubt Of It.

People Do Not Seem To Talk For The Sake Of Expressing Their Opinions, But To Maintain An Opinion For The Sake Of Talking.

I Maintain That There Is No Common Language Or Medium Of Understanding Between People Of Education And Without It - Between Those Who Judge Of Things From Books Or From Their Senses. Ignorance Has So Far The Advantage Over Learning; For It Can Make An Appeal To You From What You Know; But You Cannot Re-act Upon It Through That Which It Is A Perfect Stranger To. Ignorance Is, Therefore, Power.

The Insolence Of The Vulgar Is In Proportion To Their Ignorance. They Treat Everything With Contempt Which They Do Not Understand.

Vice Is Man's Nature: Virtue Is A Habit -- Or A Mask. . . . The Foregoing Maxim Shows The Difference Between Truth And Sarcasm.

Those Who Are Fond Of Setting Things To Rights, Have No Great Objection To Seeing Them Wrong.

As Hypocrisy Is Said To Be The Highest Compliment To Virtue, The Art Of Lying Is The Strongest Acknowledgment Of The Force Of Truth.

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.

A Thought Must Tell At Once, Or Not At All.

Those Who Have The Largest Hearts Have The Soundest Understandings; And They Are The Truest Philosophers Who Can Forget Themselves.

He Is A Hypocrite Who Professes What He Does Not Believe; Not He Who Does Not Practice All He Wishes Or Approves.

You Know More Of A Road By Having Traveled It Than By All The Conjectures And Descriptions In The World.

Envy Is A Littleness Of Soul, Which Cannot See Beyond A Certain Point, And If It Does Not Occupy The Whole Space Feels Itself Excluded.

We Do Not Attend To The Advice Of The Sage And Experienced Because We Think They Are Old, Forgetting That They Once Were Young And Placed In The Same Situations As Ourselves.

Political Truth Is Libel; Religious Truth, Blasphemy.

A Knave Thinks Himself A Fool, All The Time He Is Not Making A Fool Of Some Other Person.

I Am Not, In The Ordinary Acceptation Of The Term, A Good-natured Man; That Is, Many Things Annoy Me Besides What Interferes With My Own Ease And Interest. I Hate A Lie; A Piece Of Injustice Wounds Me To The Quick, Though Nothing But The Report Of It Reach Me. Therefore I Have Made Many Enemies And Few Friends; For The Public Know Nothing Of Well-wishers, And Keep A Wary Eye On Those Who Would Reform Them.

Poetry Is The Universal Language Which The Heart Holds With Nature And Itself. He Who Has A Contempt For Poetry, Cannot Have Much Respect For Himself, Or For Anything Else.

Vice Is Man's Nature: Virtue Is A Habit--or A Mask.

There Cannot Be A Surer Proof Of Low Origin, Or Of An Innate Meanness Of Disposition, Than To Be Always Talking And Thinking Of Being Genteel.

The World Judge Of Men By Their Ability In Their Profession, And We Judge Of Ourselves By The Same Test: For It Is On That On Which Our Success In Life Depends.

Art Is The Microscope Of The Mind, Which Sharpens The Wit As The Other Does The Sight; And Converts Every Object Into A Little Universe In Itself. Art May Be Said To Draw Aside The Veil From Nature. To Those Who Are Perfectly Unskilled In The Practice, Unimbued With The Principles Of Art, Most Objects Present Only A Confused Mass.

No Young Man Ever Thinks He Shall Die.

Hope Is The Best Possession. None Are Completely Wretched But Those Who Are Without Hope. Few Are Reduced So Low As That.

Hoping For The Best

Poetry Is All That Is Worth Remembering In Life.

Religion Either Makes Men Wise And Virtuous, Or It Makes Them Set Up False Pretenses To Both.

Genius, Like Humanity, Rusts For Want Of Use.

There Is Some Virtue In Almost Every Vice, Except Hypocrisy; And Even That, While It Is A Mockery Of Virtue, Is At The Same Time A Compliment To It.

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.

A Man Who Is Determined Never To Move Out Of The Beaten Road Cannot Lose His Way.

That Which Is Not, Shall Never Be; That Which Is, Shall Never Cease To Be. To The Wise, These Truths Are Self-evident.

There Is Nothing So Remote From Vanity As True Genius. It Is Almost As Natural For Those Who Are Endowed With The Highest Powers Of The Human Mind To Produce The Miracles Of Art, As For Other Men To Breathe Or Move. Correggio, Who Is Said To Have Produced Some Of His Divinest Works Almost Without Having Seen A Picture, Probably Did Not Know That He Had Done Anything Extraordinary.

Principle Is A Passion For Truth.

Those Who Speak Ill Of The Spiritual Life, Although They Come And Go By Day, Are Like The Smith's Bellows: They Take Breath But Are Not Alive.

I Am Proud Up To The Point Of Equality; Everything Above Or Below That Appears To Me Arrant Impertinence Or Abject Meanness.

The Truth Is, We Pamper Little Griefs Into Great Ones, And Bear Great Ones As Well As We Can.

The Way To Secure Success Is To Be More Anxious About Obtaining Than About Deserving It.

A Great Man La An Abstraction Of Some One Excellence; But Whoever Fancies Himself An Abstraction Of Excellence, So Far From Being Great, May Be Sure That He Is A Blockhead, Equally Ignorant Of Excellence Or Defect Of Himself Or Others.

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.

[science Is] The Desire To Know Causes.

The Multitude Who Require To Be Led, Still Hate Their Leaders.

Man Is A Make-believe Animal: He Is Never So Truly Himself As When He Is Acting A Part.

We Find Many Things To Which The Prohibition Of Them Constitutes The Only Temptation.

The More A Man Writes, The More He Can Write.

Belief Is With Them Mechanical, Voluntary: They Believe What They Are Paid For - They Swear To That Which Turns To Account. Do You Suppose, That After Years Spent In This Manner, They Have Any Feeling Left Answering To The Difference Between Truth And Falsehood?

With Women, The Great Business Of Life Is Love; And They Generally Make A Mistake In It. They Consult Neither The Heart Nor The Head, But Are Led Away By Mere Humour And Fancy. If Instead Of A Companion For Life, They Had To Choose A Partner In A Country-dance Or To Trifle Away An Hour With, Their Mode Of Calculation Would Be Right. They Tie Their True-lover's Knot With Idle, Thoughtless Haste, While The Institutions Of Society Render It Indissoluble.

The Present Is An Age Of Talkers, And Not Of Doers; And The Reason Is, That The World Is Growing Old. We Are So Far Advanced In The Arts And Sciences, That We Live In Retrospect, And Dote On Past Achievement.

No Truly Great Person Ever Thought Themselves So.

Actors Are The Only Honest Hypocrites.

Many A Man Would Have Turned Rogue If He Knew How.

That Which Anyone Has Been Long Learning Unwillingly, He Unlearns With Proportional Eagerness And Haste.

An Orator Can Hardly Get Beyond Commonplaces: If He Does He Gets Beyond His Hearers.

Public Speaking

What Passes In The World For Talent Or Dexterity Or Enterprise Is Often Only A Want Of Moral Principle. We May Succeed Where Others Fail, Not From A Greater Share Of Invention, But From Not Being Nice In The Choice Of Expedients.

Our Lives Are Ruled By Impermanence. The Challenge Is How To Create Something Of Enduring Value Within The Context Of Our Impermanent Lives. Soka Gakkai Great Thoughts Reduced To Practice Become Great Acts.

The Great Requisite For The Prosperous Management Of Ordinary Business Is The Want Of Imagination.

Natural Affection Is A Prejudice; For Though We Have Cause To Love Our Nearest Connections Better Than Others, We Have No Reason To Think Them Better Than Others.

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