"We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives."

Hazlitt, William on caprice   

"Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols -- it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them."

Hazlitt, William on superstition   

"We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation."

Hazlitt, William on taboos   

"Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination."

Hazlitt, William on taste   

"Good temper is one of the greatest preservers of the features."

Hazlitt, William on temper   

"Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts."

Hazlitt, William on thoughts and thinking   

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"I would like to spend my whole life traveling, if I could borrow another life to spend at home."

Hazlitt, William on travel
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"There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you."

Hazlitt, William on tyranny
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"The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture."

Hazlitt, William on understanding   

"The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings."

Hazlitt, William on value
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"To a superior race of being the pretensions of mankind to extraordinary sanctity and virtue must seem... ridiculous."

Hazlitt, William on virtue   

"People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel."

Hazlitt, William on vocation
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"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."

Hazlitt, William on vocation   

"Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves."

Hazlitt, William on war
3 fans of this quote   

"The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues."

Hazlitt, William on confession   

"As is our confidence, so is our capacity."

Hazlitt, William on confidence   

"When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest."

Hazlitt, William on controversy
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"We are all of us, more or less, the slaves of opinion."

Hazlitt, William on cooperation   

"Gallantry to women -- the sure road to their favor -- is nothing but the appearance of extreme devotion to all their wants and wishes, a delight in their satisfaction, and a confidence in yourself as being able to contribute toward it."

Hazlitt, William on courage   

"We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts."

Hazlitt, William on courage   

"Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization. It makes the meanest of us sacred --it installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death is the greatest assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch the dropsy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and mingle with the dust --the finer and more ethereal part mounts with winged spirit to watch over our latest memory, and protect our bones from insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness."

Hazlitt, William on death   

"My country is the world; my countrymen are mankind."

Garrison, William Lloyd on country   

"If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started."

Garvey, Marcus on confidence
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"Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!"

Gauguin, Paul on life   

"The man who comes up with a means for doing or producing almost anything better, faster or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips."

Getty, J. Paul on excellence   

"The individual who wants to reach the top in business must appreciate the might of the force of habit and must understand that practices are what create habits. He must be quick to break those habits that can break him and hasten to adopt those practices that will become the habits that help him achieve the success he desires."

Getty, J. Paul on habit   

"To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business."

Getty, J. Paul on knowledge   

"There are always opportunities through which businessmen can profit handsomely if they will only recognize and seize them."

Getty, J. Paul on opportunity   

"I buy when other people are selling."

Getty, J. Paul on business   

"The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators."

Gibbon, Edward on ability
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"We improve ourselves by victories over ourselves. There must be contest, and we must win."

Gibbon, Edward on self-control
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"A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute."

Gibbon, Edward on action
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"One mustn't allow acting to be like stockbroker -- you must not take it just as a means of earning a living, to go down every day to do a job of work. The big thing is to combine punctuality, efficiency, good nature, obedience, intelligence, and concentration with an unawareness of what is going to happen next, thus keeping yourself available for excitement."

Gielgud, John on action   

"In every election in American history both parties have their cliches. The party that has the cliches that ring true wins."

Gingrich, Newt on elections   

"If Thomas Edison invented electric light today, Dan Rather would report it on CBS News as, Candle making industry threatened."

Gingrich, Newt on media
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"If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else."

Giovanni, Nikki on understanding
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"No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes."

Gladstone, William E. on failure
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"Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic."

Gladstone, William E. on logic
3 fans of this quote   

"Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won't have to hunt for happiness."

Gladstone, William E. on contentment
3 fans of this quote   

"We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's work, that is its affair. We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come."

Goebbels, Paul Joseph on fascism