Today is the birthday of William Makepeace Thackeray, b. 1811. (Wouldn’t Makepeace be a great middle name for a little boy?) Thackeray and Dickens were rivals, and Dickens was the more popular of the two. Howver, I like Thackeray–especially Vanity Fair and Henry Esmond. I tried to read Pendennis a few times but never got very far with it.

From Henry Esmond:
So a man dashes a fine vase down and despises it for being broken. It may be worthless–true; but who had the keeping of it , and who shattered it?

As there are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write, so the heart is a secret even to him (or her) who has it in his own breast.

From the loss of a tooth to that of a mistress there’s no pang that is not bearable. The apprehension is much more cruel than the certainty.

From 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.

She did not dare to own that the man she loved was her inferior; or to feel that she had given her heart away too soon. Given once, the pure bashful maiden was too modest, too tender, too trustful, too weak, too much woman to recall it.

It is all Vanity, to be sure, but who will not own to liking a little of it? I would like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because it is transitory, dislikes roast beef?