William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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Fairy roses, fairy rings, turn out sometimes troublesome things.
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What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables.
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I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning.
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When men see a pretty woman, and feel the delicious madness of love coming over them, they always stop to calculate her temper, her money, their own money, or suitableness for the married life.... Ha, ha, ha! Let us fool in this way no more. I have been in love forty-three times with all ranks and conditions of women, and would have married every time if they would have let me. How many wives had King Solomon, the wisest of men? And is not that story a warning to us that Love is master of the wisest? It is only fools who defy him.
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The thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair.
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Certain corpuscles, denominated Christmas Books, with the ostensible intention of swelling the tide of exhilaration, or other expansive emotions, incident upon the exodus of the old and the inauguration of the New Year.
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Benevolence and feeling ennoble the most trifling actions.
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The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.
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What will a man not do when frantic with love? To what baseness will he not demean himself? What pangs will he not make others suffer, so that he may ease his selfish heart?
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Life is soul's nursery- its training place for the destinies of eternity.
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Could the best and kindest of us who depart from the earth have an opportunity of revisiting it, I suppose he or she (assuming that any Vanity Fair feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound) would have a pang of mortification at finding how soon our survivors were consoled.
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If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!
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I have seen no men in life loving their profession so much as painters, except, perhaps, actors, who, when not engaged themselves, always go to the play.
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The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.
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When I say that I know women, I mean I know that I don't know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as, I have no doubt, she is to herself.
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A pair of bright eyes with a dozen glances suffice to subdue a man; to enslave him, and enflame him; to make him even forget; they dazzle him so that the past becomes straightway dim to him; and he so prizes them that he would give all his life to possess 'em.
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It was in the reign of George II. that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled ; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now
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An evil person is like a dirty window, they never let the light shine through.
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A woman's heart is just like a lithographer's stone; what is once written upon it cannot be rubbed out.
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A crow, who had flown away with a cheese from a dairy window, sate perched on a tree looking down at a great big frog in a pool underneath him.
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Those we love can but walk down to the pier with us - the voyage we must make alone.
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Our measure of rewards and punishments is most partial and incomplete, absurdly inadequate, utterly worldly; and we wish to continue it into the next world. Into that next and awful world we strive to pursue men, and send after them our impotent paltry verdicts of condemnation or acquittal. We set up our paltry little rod to measure heaven immeasurable.
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Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish. Alas, the heart hardens as the blood ceases to run. The cold snow strikes down from the head, and checks the glow of feeling. Who wants to survive into old age after abdicating all his faculties one by one, and be sans teeth, sans eyes, sans memory, sans hope, sans sympathy?
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Pray, dear madam, another glass; it is Christmas time, it will do you no harm.