Vanity Fair Quotes

“Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“All is vanity, nothing is fair.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“If a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relative to do the business.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“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.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair of bright eyes make pardonable? What dullness may not red lips are sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise. ”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“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, Vanity Fair

“...the greatest tyrants over women are women.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“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.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“A person can't help their birth. ”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object, in order, as we said, to be consistent.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“She lived in her past life- these relics and remembrances of dead affection were all that was left her in the world.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“it is the ordinary lot of people to have no friends if they themselves care for nobody”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“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 trameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every schoolmaster perish miserably!”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“If a man has committed wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his errors out to the world than his own relations...”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair: A Novel Without A Hero

“Praise everybody, I say to such: never be squeamish, but speak out your compliment both point-blank in a man's face, and behind his back, when you know there is a reasonable chance of his hearing it again. Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in; so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing; but it may sprout into a prodigious bit of timber.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“When one fib becomes due as it were, you must forge another to take up the old acceptance; and so the stock of your lies in circulation inevitably multiplies, and the danger of detection increases every day.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“Be cautious then, young ladies; be wary how you engage. Be shy of loving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still), feel very little. See the consequences of being prematurely honest and confiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybody. Get yourselves married as they do in France, where the lawyers are the bridesmaids and confidantes. At any rate, never have any feelings which may make you uncomfortable, or make any promises which you cannot at any required moment command and withdraw. That is the way to get on, and be respected, and have a virtuous character in Vanity Fair.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“Money has only a different value in the eyes of each.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“All the world used her ill, said this young misanthropist, ... and we may be pretty certain that persons whom all the world treats ill, deserve entirely the treatment they get. 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.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slip-shod and in curl-papers, all day.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair