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Might I give counsel to any man, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and in life, that is the most wholesome society learn to admire rightly the great pleasure of life is that. Note what great men admire.

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
Great
Company
Admiration
Trying
Pleasure
Note
Would
Society
Admire
Men
Learn
Notes
Betters
Life
Give
Greatness
Wholesome
Might
Leadership
Frequent
Book
Learning
Counsel
Giving
Books
Rightly

More quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray

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Those who are gone, you have. Those who departed loving you, love you still and you love them always. They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true they are only gone into the next room and you will presently get up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you will be no more seen.
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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The great moments of life are but moments like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes a mere pressure of the hand, may decide it or of the lip,s though they cannot speak.
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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I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Perhaps there is no greater test of a man's regularity and easiness of conscience than his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of a rat-tat! The good are eager for it but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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One of the greatest of a great man's qualities is success 't is the result of all the others 't is a latent power in him which compels the favor of the gods, and subjugates fortune.
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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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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If you take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better than his neighbor?
William Makepeace Thackeray
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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.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.
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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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
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She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slip-shod and in curl-papers, all day.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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What is a gentleman? It is to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise and possessed of all these qualities to exercise them in the most graceful manner.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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He who meanly admires a mean thing is a snob--perhaps that is a safe definition of the character.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Who feels injustice, who shrinks before a slight, who has a sense of wrong so acute, and so glowing a gratitude for kindness, as a generous boy?
William Makepeace Thackeray
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It is a friendly heart that has plenty of friends.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Every man ought to be in love a few times in his life, and to have a smart attack of the fever. You are better for it when it is over: the better for your misfortune, if you endure it with a manly heart how much the better for success, if you win it and a good wife into the bargain!
William Makepeace Thackeray