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I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

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
Knew
Whether
Never
Curmudgeon
Men
Congratulate
Anniversary
Pity
Senses
Coming

More quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray

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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
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Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men's faces that is honored wherever presented. You cannot help trusting such men. Their very presence gives confidence. There is promise to pay in their faces which gives confidence and you prefer it to another man's endorsement. Character is credit.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Could the best and kindest of us who depart from the earth have an opportunity of revisiting it, I suppose he or she (assuming that any Vanity Fair feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound) would have a pang of mortification at finding how soon our survivors were consoled.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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It is all very well for you, who have probably never seen any spiritual manifestations, to talk as you do but if you had seen what I have witnessed you would hold a different opinion.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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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
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There is no good in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else. The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object, in order, as we said, to be consistent.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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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
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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
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A good laugh is sunshine in the house.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion and so let all young persons take their choice.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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A person can't help their birth.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Life is the soul's nursery.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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I set it down as a maxim, that it is good for a man to live where he can meet his betters, intellectual and social.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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To see a young couple loving each other is no wonder but to see an old couple loving each other is the best sight of all.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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If dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two nor am I lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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To be thought rich is as good as to be rich.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt how they deny themselves nothing how jolly and easy they are in their minds.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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It is an awful thing to get a glimpse, as one sometimes does, when the time is past, of some little, little wheel which works the whole mighty machinery of fate, and see how our destinies turn on a minute's delay or advance.
William Makepeace Thackeray