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Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders.
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
Men
Obey
Customs
Bound
Bounds
Law
Ordained
Society
Harmless
Order
Orders
Certain
Conform
More quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray
If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
William Makepeace Thackeray
Time passes, Time the consoler, Time the anodyne.
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
I have seen no men in life loving their profession so much as painters, except, perhaps, actors, who, when not engaged themselves, always go to the play.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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
Young ladies may have been crossed in love, and have had their sufferings, their frantic moments of grief and tears, their wakeful nights, and so forth but it is only in very sentimental novels that people occupy themselves perpetually with that passion, and I believe what are called broken hearts are a very rare article indeed.
William Makepeace Thackeray
The little cares, fears, tears, timid misgivings, sleepless fancies of I don't know how many days and nights, were forgotten under one moment's influence of that familiar, irresistible smile.
William Makepeace Thackeray
When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole.
William Makepeace Thackeray
In effective womanly beauty form is more than face, and manner more than either.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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
The tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, it is a meanness to calculate the difference.
William Makepeace Thackeray
We have only to change the point of view and the greatest action looks mean.
William Makepeace Thackeray
The play is done the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter's bell A moment yet the actor stops And looks around to say farewell.
William Makepeace Thackeray
To endure is greater than to dare to tire out hostile fortune to be daunted my no difficulty to keep heart when all have lost it to go through intrigue spotless to forgo even ambition when the end is gained - who can say this is not greatness?
William Makepeace Thackeray
He who meanly admires a mean thing is a snob--perhaps that is a safe definition of the character.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?-Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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
The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Never marry with the expectation of changing a person.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Who was the blundering idiot who said 'fine words butter no parsnips'? Half the parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no other sauce.
William Makepeace Thackeray