William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?
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Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders.
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Humor is the mistress of tears.
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The tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, it is a meanness to calculate the difference.
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Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
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Who does not believe his first passion eternal?
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Kindness is very indigestible. It disagrees with very proud stomachs.
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Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
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Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard... 'Tis the living up to it that's difficult.
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All is vanity, look you; and so the preacher is vanity too.
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Under the magnetism of friendship the modest man becomes bold; the shy, confident; the lazy, active; and the impetuous, prudent and peaceful.
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It is comparatively easy to leave a mistress, but very hard to be left by one.
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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.
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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."
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Alas! we are the sport of destiny.
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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.
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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.
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Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.
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Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, 'To-morrow, success or failure won't matter much; and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.'
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There's a great power of imagination about these little creatures, and a creative fancy and belief that is very curious to watch . . . I am sure that horrid matter-of-fact child-rearers . . . do away with the child's most beautiful privilege. I am determined that Anny shall have a very extensive and instructive store of learning in Tom Thumbs, Jack-the-Giant-Killers, etc.
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Bad husbands will make bad wives.
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A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES.
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She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slip-shod and in curl-papers, all day.
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Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?