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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
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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
Never
Misfortunes
Life
Qualities
Hearts
Awakens
Gave
Fortitude
Circumstances
Ingenuity
Quality
Misfortune
Come
Circumstance
Heart
Endurance
More quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray
When Fate wills that something should come to pass, she sends forth a million of little circumstances to clear and prepare the way.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Certain it is that scandal is good brisk talk, whereas praise of one's neighbor is by no means lively hearing. An acquaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and served with mustard and cayenne pepper excites the appetite whereas a slice of cold friend with currant jelly is but a sickly, unrelishing meat.
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
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
When I say that I know women, I mean I know that I don't know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as, I have no doubt, she is to herself.
William Makepeace Thackeray
I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?
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
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
If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied.
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
There is a skeleton in every house.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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
Humor is the mistress of tears.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Be it remembered that man subsists upon the air more than upon his meat and drink but no one can exist for an hour without a copious supply of air. The atmosphere which some breathe is contaminated and adulterated, and with its vital principles so diminished that it cannot fully decarbonize the blood, nor fully excite the nervous system.
William Makepeace Thackeray
To forego even ambition when the end is gained - who can say this is not greatness?
William Makepeace Thackeray
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
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
Dare and the world always yields or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and it will succumb.
William Makepeace Thackeray
The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.
William Makepeace Thackeray
