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What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the bankers! How tenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative; what a kind, good-natured old creature we find her!

— William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair (1847)

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More quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.

The History of Henry Esmond (1852)

Good humour may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.

Sketches and Travels in London (1847)

I never know whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

The Virginians (1857)

How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!

The History of Pendennis (1848)

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't: and are proud of our impotence, too.

The History of Pendennis (1848)

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Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.

Étienne de La Boétie Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.

Gautama Buddha

Opulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, then by his predecessor.

Jerome The Cry for Justice (1915)

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

Max Horkheimer Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William Makepeace Thackeray (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.