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Diffidence is a sort of false modesty.
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
Diffidence
Modesty
False
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More quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray
What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Successful people aren't born that way. They become successful by establishing the habit of doing things unsuccessful people don't like to do. The successful people don't always like these things themselves they just get on and do them.
William Makepeace Thackeray
She lived in her past life — every letter seemed to recall some circumstance of it. How well she remembered them all! His looks and tones, his dress, what he said and how — these relics and remembrances of dead affection were all that were left her in the world.
William Makepeace Thackeray
As an occupation in declining years, I declare I think saving is useful, amusing and not unbecoming. It must be a perpetual amusement. It is a game that can be played by day, by night, at home and abroad, and at which you must win in the long run. . . . What an interest it imparts to life!.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Vanity is often the unseen spur.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Perhaps all early love affairs ought to be strangled or drowned, like so many blind kittens.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Tis misfortune that awakens ingenuity, or fortitude, or endurance, in hearts where these qualities had never come to life but for the circumstance which gave them a being.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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
If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!
William Makepeace Thackeray
The world is full of love and pity, I say. Had there been less suffering, there would have been less kindness.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back if you smile, it returns the greeting.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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
Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.
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
Malice is of the boomerang character, and is apt to turn upon the projector.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Not only is the world informed of everything about you, but of a great deal more.
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
I never was much of an oyster eater, nor can I relish them 'in naturalibus' as some do, but require a quantity of sauces, lemons, cayenne peppers, bread and butter, and so forth, to render them palatable.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Oh, Vanity of vanities! How wayward the decrees of Fate are How very weak the very wise, How very small the very great are!
William Makepeace Thackeray
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