Quote

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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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
Giving
Faces
Choice
Sourly
Every
Upon
Laughing
Frown
Kind
Young
Gives
Jolly
Men
Persons
Turn
Companion
World
Back
Choices
Glass
Look
Looking
Glasses
Looks
Face
Reflection
Take
Turns
Laugh

More quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray

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A snob is that man or woman who is always pretending to be something better--especially richer or more fashionable--than he is.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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There is a certain sort of man whose doom in the world is disappointment, who excels in it, and whose luckless triumphs in his meek career of life, I have often thought, must be regarded by the kind eyes above with as much favor as the splendid successes and achievements of coarser and more prosperous men.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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As fits the holy Christmas birth, Be this, good friends, our carol still Be peace on earth, be peace on earth, To men of gentle will.
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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We have only to change the point of view and the greatest action looks mean.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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To forego even ambition when the end is gained - who can say this is not greatness?
William Makepeace Thackeray
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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.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Werther had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter.
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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Presently, we were aware of an odour gradually coming towards us, something musky, fiery, savoury, mysterious, - a hot drowsy smell, that lulls the senses, and yet enflames them, - the truffles were coming.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables.
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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If a man has committed wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his errors out to the world than his own relations.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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If fathers are sometimes sulky at the appearance of the destined son-in-law, is it not a fact that mothers become sentimental and, as it were, love their own loves over again.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Oh, brother wearers of motley, are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and trembling and the jingling of cap and bells?
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Life without laughing is a dreary blank.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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There is no man that can teach us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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At that comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain we had a bouillabaisse than which a better was never eaten at Marseilles and not the least headache in the morning, I give you my word on the contrary, you only wake with a sweet refreshing thirst for claret and water.
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