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People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
He who meanly admires a mean thing is a snob--perhaps that is a safe definition of the character.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?-Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be offended.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Diffidence is a sort of false modesty.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Who has not seen how women bully women? What tortures have men to endure compared to those daily repeated shafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor women are riddled by the tyrants of their sex?
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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It is from the level of calamities, not that of every-day life, that we learn impressive and useful lessons.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Taste is something quite different from fashion, superior to fashion.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Successful people aren't born that way. They become successful by establishing the habit of doing things unsuccessful people don't like to do. The successful people don't always like these things themselves; they just get on and do them.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
To forego even ambition when the end is gained - who can say this is not greatness?
William Makepeace Thackeray -
She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slip-shod and in curl-papers, all day.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Alas! we are the sport of destiny.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Kindness is very indigestible. It disagrees with very proud stomachs.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
So they pass away: friends, kindred, the dearest-loved, grown people, aged, infants. As we go on the down-hill journey, the mile-stones are grave-stones, and on each more and more names are written; unless haply you live beyond man's common age, when friends have dropped off, and, tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you reach the terminus alone.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
The play is done; the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter's bell A moment yet the actor stops And looks around to say farewell.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
At certain periods of life, we live years of emotion in a few weeks, and look back on those times as on great gaps between the old life and the new.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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We should pay as much reverence to youth as we should to age; there are points in which you young folks are altogether our superiors: and I can't help constantly crying out to persons of my own years, when busied about their young people--leave them alone; don't be always meddling with their affairs, which they can manage for themselves; don't be always insisting upon managing their boats, and putting your oars in the water with theirs.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy! Pendennis. Book ii. Chap. xxxi.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it.
William Makepeace Thackeray