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Next to the very young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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William Makepeace Thackeray
Age: 52 †
Born: 1811
Born: July 18
Died: 1863
Died: December 24
Novelist
Prosaist
Writer
Calcutta
William Makepeace Thackeray
George Fitz-Boodle
Selfishness
Selfish
Suppose
Next
Young
More quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray
Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and planted it, so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing, but it may spread into a prodigious timber.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Come forward, some great marshal, and organize equality in society, and your rod shall swallow up all the juggling old court gold-sticks
William Makepeace Thackeray
We pass by common objects or persons without noticing them but the keen eye detects and notes types everywhere and among all classes.
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
Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin That never has known the barber's shear, All your wish is woman to win, This is the way that boys begin. Wait till you come to Forty Year.
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
Young ladies may have been crossed in love, and have had their sufferings, their frantic moments of grief and tears, their wakeful nights, and so forth but it is only in very sentimental novels that people occupy themselves perpetually with that passion, and I believe what are called broken hearts are a very rare article indeed.
William Makepeace Thackeray
I have long gone about with a conviction on my mind that I had a work to do-a Work, if you like, with a great W a Purpose to fulfil ... a Great Social Evil to Discover and to Remedy.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Love makes fools of us all, big and little.
William Makepeace Thackeray
It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Titles are abolished and the American Republic swarms with men claiming and bearing them.
William Makepeace Thackeray
That acknowledgment of weakness which we make in imploring to be relieved from hunger and from temptation is surely wisely put in our daily prayer. Think of it, you who are rich, and take heed how you turn a beggar away.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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.
William Makepeace Thackeray
It seems to me one cannot sit down in that place [the Round Reading room of the British Museum] without a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table, and to have thanked Heaven for my English birthright, freely to partake of these beautiful books, and speak the truth I find there.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?
William Makepeace Thackeray
What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the bankers! How tenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative what a kind, good-natured old creature we find her!
William Makepeace Thackeray
Oh, my young friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love-business, and how undignified, sometimes, the end!
William Makepeace Thackeray
Though small was your allowance, You saved a little store: And those who save a little, Shall get a plenty more.
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
If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
William Makepeace Thackeray
