William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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When one fib becomes due as it were, you must forge another to take up the old acceptance; and so the stock of your lies in circulation inevitably multiplies, and the danger of detection increases every day.
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The little cares, fears, tears, timid misgivings, sleepless fancies of I don't know how many days and nights, were forgotten under one moment's influence of that familiar, irresistible smile.
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Werther had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter.
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To be beautiful is enough! if a woman can do that well who should demand more from her? You don't want a rose to sing.
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When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole.
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To describe love – making is immoral and immodest; you know it is. To describe it as it really is, or would appear to you and me as lookers – on, would be to describe the most dreary farce, to chronicle the most tautological twaddle. To take note of sighs, hand – squeezes, looks at the moon, and so forth – does this business become our dignity as historians? Come away from those foolish young people – they don't want us; and dreary as their farce is, and tautological as their twaddle, you may be sure it amuses them, and that they are happy enough without us.
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Sure, love vincit omnia; is immeasurably above all ambition, more precious than wealth, more noble than name. He knows not life who knows not that: he hath not felt the highest faculty of the soul who hath not enjoyed it.
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Sure, occasion is the father of most that is good in us.
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Might I give counsel to any man, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and in life, that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what great men admire.
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We have only to change the point of view and the greatest action looks mean.
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Remember, it's as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.
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One of the greatest of a great man's qualities is success; 't is the result of all the others; 't is a latent power in him which compels the favor of the gods, and subjugates fortune.
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A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair of bright eyes make pardonable? What dullness may not red lips are sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise.
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You read the past in some old faces.
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Only to two or three persons in all the world are the reminiscences of a man's early youth interesting: to the parent who nursed him; to the fond wife or child mayhap afterwards who loves him; to himself always and supremely--whatever may be his actual prosperity or ill fortune, his present age, illness, difficulties, renown, or disappointments--the dawn of his life still shines brightly for him, the early griefs and delights and attachments remain with him ever faithful and dear.
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Almost all women have hearts full of pity.
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Money has only a different value in the eyes of each.
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If you take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better than his neighbor?
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I will bring order from chaos and light from darkness.
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Business first; pleasure afterwards.
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So, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise.
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As if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than the man who blacks my boots.
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What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.