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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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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
Serpent
Listened
Paradise
Perfectly
Happiness
Happy
Would
Tempter
Beforehand
More quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray
To our betters eve can reconcile ourselves, if you please--respecting them sincerely, laughing at their jokes, making allowance for their stupidities, meekly suffering their insolence but we can't pardon our equals going beyond us.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Certain corpuscles, denominated Christmas Books, with the ostensible intention of swelling the tide of exhilaration, or other expansive emotions, incident upon the exodus of the old and the inauguration of the New Year.
William Makepeace Thackeray
It is from the level of calamities, not that of every-day life, that we learn impressive and useful lessons.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Women are jealous of cigars... they regard them as a strong rival.
William Makepeace Thackeray
How do men feel whose whole lives (and many men's lives are) are lies, schemes, and subterfuges? What sort of company do they keep when they are alone? Daily in life I watch men whose every smile is an artifice, and every wink is an hypocrisy. Doth such a fellow where a mask in his own privacy, and to his own conscience?
William Makepeace Thackeray
Kindnesses are easily forgotten but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?
William Makepeace Thackeray
Humor is the mistress of tears.
William Makepeace Thackeray
'No business before breakfast, Glum!' says the King. 'Breakfast first, business next.'
William Makepeace Thackeray
Malice is of the boomerang character, and is apt to turn upon the projector.
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
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
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
A cheerful look brings joy to the heart.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?
William Makepeace Thackeray
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
It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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
You must not judge hastily or vulgarly of Snobs: to do so shows that you are yourself a Snob.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Lucky he who has been educated to bear his fate, whatsoever it may be, by an early example of uprightness, and a childish training in honor.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Life without laughing is a dreary blank.
William Makepeace Thackeray
