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Vanity Fair quotes
11 quotes from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #599 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
Great ministers and statesmen courted him; and in Vanity Fair he had a higher place than the most brilliant genius or spotless virtue.
"Revenge may be wicked, but it's natural," answered Miss Rebecca. "I'm no angel."
— Miss Rebecca · Chapter II
The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.
Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?
Yes, if a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relation to do the business.
I am tempted to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great compliment to a woman.
If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!
Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.
But oh, mesdames, if you are not allowed to touch the heart sometimes in spite of syntax, and are not to be loved until you all know the difference between trimeter and tetrameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every schoolmaster perish miserably!
It is quite edifying to hear women speculate upon the worthlessness and the duration of beauty.
It was over these few worthless papers that she brooded and brooded. 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. And the business of her life, was--to watch the corpse of Love.