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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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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
Philosopher
Pretends
Worth
Eminence
Struggle
Attaining
Poor
Spirited
Altogether
Coward
Sluggard
Decline
Unambitious
Calls
Declines
More quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray
There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.
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The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is forever in a passion.
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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?
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Tis hard with respect to Beauty, that its possessor should not have a life enjoyment of it, but be compelled to resign it after, at the most, some forty years lease
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Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them-almost all women a vast number of clever, hardheaded men.
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A crow, who had flown away with a cheese from a dairy window, sate perched on a tree looking down at a great big frog in a pool underneath him.
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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.
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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?
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You, who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your calling, are a snob as are you who boast of your wealth.
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A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible.
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It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.
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Ah me! we wound where we never intended to strike we create anger where we never meant harm and these thoughts are the thorns in our cushion. - William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray
If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!
William Makepeace Thackeray
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.
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Which of us that is thirty years old has not had its Pompeii? Deep under ashes lies the life of youth--the careless sport, the pleasure and the passion, the darling joy.
William Makepeace Thackeray
An immense percentage of snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of this mortal life.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Love makes fools of us all, big and little.
William Makepeace Thackeray
We can't all be lions in this world. There must be some lambs, harmless, kindly, gregarious creatures for eating and shearing.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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
Oh, those women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make darlings of their ugliest thoughts.
William Makepeace Thackeray
