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When a mother, as fond mothers will; vows that she knows every thought in her daughter's heart, I think she pretends to know a great deal too much.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
The great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them-almost all women; a vast number of clever, hardheaded men.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Almost all women will give a sympathizing hearing to men who are in love. Be they ever so old, they grow young again with that conversation, and renew their own early times.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
What man's life is not overtaken by one or more of those tornadoes that send us out of the course, and fling us on rocks to shelter as best we may?
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Then sing as Martin Luther sang, As Doctor Martin Luther sang, "Who loves not wine, woman and song, He is a fool his whole life long."
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Tis hard with respect to Beauty, that its possessor should not have a life enjoyment of it, but be compelled to resign it after, at the most, some forty years lease
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Charming Alnaschar visions! it is the happy privilege of youth to construct you.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
We are most of us very lonely in this world; you who have any who love you, cling to them and thank God.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
A gentleman, is a rarer thing than some of us think for. Which of us can point out many such in his circle--men whose aims are generous, whose truth is constant and elevated; who can look the world honestly in the face, with an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small? We all know a hundred whose coats are well made, and a score who have excellent manners; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little scrap of paper, and each make out his list.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Bad husbands will make bad wives.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Oh, those women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make darlings of their ugliest thoughts.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Happy! Who is happy? Was there not a serpent in Paradise itself? And if Eve had been perfectly happy beforehand, would she have listened to the tempter?
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Let a man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world yields, or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and you will succeed.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?
William Makepeace Thackeray -
The world is good natured to people who are good natured.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
It is comparatively easy to leave a mistress, but very hard to be left by one.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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A person can't help their birth.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned have a great tenderness and pity for the poor folks who are not endowed with the prodigious talents which we have.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
Who was the blundering idiot who said 'fine words butter no parsnips'? Half the parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no other sauce.
William Makepeace Thackeray -
We who have lived before railways were made belong to another world. It was only yesterday, but what a gulf between now and then! Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth -- all these belong to the old period. But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark.
William Makepeace Thackeray