Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, born in Calcutta, India (1811). His father worked for the British East India Company, but he died when Thackeray was just a boy, and Thackeray's mother sent him back to England to go to boarding school. He missed his mother so much in England that every night, before he went to bed, he prayed that he would dream of her.
He hated school, and spent all his time drawing humorous pictures and writing satirical essays about his teachers. He had an inheritance waiting for him from his late father, but he wouldn't receive it until he turned twenty-one, so he decided to kill time by studying law. Unfortunately, he couldn't stand law. He wrote in his diary, "I find I cannot read. I have tried it at all hours & it fails—I don't know so much now as when I came to town & that God knows was little enough." He began to spend all his time going to taverns and gaming houses, racking up gambling debts.
Just as he was about to receive his inheritance, he learned that the Indian banking houses in which his father's money was invested had collapsed, and what remained of his inheritance was gone. He was deep in debt, and he'd made no progress on a career in law. Desperate for a way to make money, he turned to the only thing he'd ever enjoyed back when he was in school: funny drawings and satirical essays. He began contributing illustrations and journalism to newspapers, and they turned out to be very popular. He made his name with a satirical column he wrote for Punch magazine called "The Snobs of England By One of Themselves." At that time, the word "snob" meant a person of the lower class, but Thackeray redefined the word as, "one who meanly admires mean things."
After he got married, Thackeray began to write novels, and he went on to become the second most popular novelist of his lifetime, after Charles Dickens. At the time, many intellectuals thought Dickens was too vulgar and sentimental, and they preferred Thackeray's work. His masterpiece was the novel Vanity Fair (1847). It's the story of Becky Sharp, the poor daughter of a drawing master who fights her way up through society by any means necessary. She delivers the novel's most famous line when she says, "I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year."
Thackeray said, "There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write."
*A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible.
*A good laugh is sunshine in the house.
*An evil person is like a dirty window, they never let the light shine through.
*Bravery never goes out of fashion.
*Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
*Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you.
*Except for the young or very happy, I can't say I am sorry for anyone who dies.
*Follow your honest convictions and be strong.
*Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.
*I would rather make my name than inherit it.
*It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.
*It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.
*It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.
*Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
*Next to excellence, comes the appreciation of it.
*Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.
*People hate as they love, unreasonably.
*People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.
*The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.
*The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.
*There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.
*To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.
*When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.
No comments:
Post a Comment