"Vanity fair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... look at the present position of American women in society. In its best aspects social life may be said to be the natural outgrowth of the Christian home. It is something far better than the world, than Vanity Fair, than the Court of Mammon, where all selfish passions meet and parade in deceptive masquerade. It is the selfish element in human nature which pervades what we call the world; self-indulgence, enjoyment, the lust of the flesh, the ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Vanity Fair.—"The story tells itself very clearly in three hundred pages of very pleasant and entertaining reading. The men and women we meet are not the men and women we really come across in this world. So much the better for us. But we are delighted to read about them, for all that; and we prophesy success ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... luxurious and the road-bed smooth. The Slough of Despond has been filled, the Valley of Humiliation bridged at its narrowest point, and the Delectable Mountains tunnelled. But scoffers say that most of the passengers make full use of the unlimited stop-over privileges allowed at Vanity Fair. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... of Piccadilly he had gone, and up into those 'digs' on the first floor, with their little dark hall, their Van Beers' drawing and Vanity Fair cartoons, and prints of racehorses, and of the old Nightgown Steeplechase; with the big chairs, and all the paraphernalia of Race Guides and race-glasses, fox-masks and stags'-horns, and hunting-whips. And yet, something that from the first moment struck him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Vanity Fair the young Marquis de Lafayette was now plunged. The grand world flowed to the feet of the Marquis and Marchioness de Lafayette. More than that, the queen at once took the tall, distinguished-looking young chevalier into the circle of her special friends. The circle ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... who, under some extraordinary stress of circumstances, was forced to walk many miles in her stocking-feet to obtain succor, and the whole story was thrilling in the extreme; whereupon the author of "Vanity Fair" exclaimed, "She was shoeicidal." Although he was an Englishman, he was not averse to a pun—even a poor one! I remember asking Mr. Thackeray whether during his visit to New York he had met Mrs. De Witt Clinton. His response was characteristic: "Yes, and she ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... had been sent for, in hopes that her lively society would have a good effect on Alice's unequal spirits; and after much deliberation it was determined that the family, with the exception of Miss Janet, should pass the winter in Washington. Miss Janet could not be induced to go to that Vanity Fair, as she called it; and if proper arrangements for her comfort could not be made, the project would have to be given up. After many proposals, each one having an unanswerable difficulty, the old lady returned from town one day, with a very satisfied countenance, having persuaded ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... localities to many generations of men, who have watched Christian's struggle with Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation, and followed his footsteps as they trod the Valley of the Shadow of Death, as they passed through the dangers of Vanity Fair, and brought him at last to the Celestial City, and the welcome of ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... business man in New York. I started "Vanity Fair," with Charles Browne [Artemus Ward] as an assistant, and I remember how I used to suggest the subjects to him, and how he used to write out the series of articles which have since become so widely known. The "Revue des Deux Mondes" recently ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Walton would have seemed a figure like his own Ignorance; a pilgrim who never stuck in the Slough of Despond, nor met Apollyon in the Valley of the Shadow, nor was captive in Doubting Castle, nor stoned in Vanity Fair. And of Bunyan, Walton would have said that he was among those Nonconformists who 'might be sincere, well-meaning men, whose indiscreet zeal might be so like charity, as thereby to cover a multitude of errors.' To Walton there seemed spiritual solace in remembering ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... suffering, sorrow, and even sin, play in the development of souls? Is it necessary that any should fall in order that they may rise? Did John Bunyan truly picture the ascent of the soul? Does its path, of necessity, lead through the Slough of Despond, through Vanity Fair, by Castle Dangerous, and into the realm of ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... with a novel under my eyes and the dictionary by my side, I would devour scores of pages. In a few weeks, often reading literally day and night, I read through Nicholas Nickleby and Vanity Fair. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... society. It aims at English follies, but its mark is universal, as the madness is. It is called a satire, but after much diligent reading, we cannot discover the satire. A state of society not at all superior to that of "Vanity Fair" is not unknown to our experience; and, unless truth-telling be satire; unless the most tragically real portraiture be satire; unless scalding tears of sorrow, and the bitter regret of a manly mind over the miserable spectacle of artificiality, wasted powers, misdirected energies, and lost opportunities, ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read one book isn't enough. I have four going at once. Just now, they're Tennyson's poems and Vanity Fair and Kipling's Plain Tales and—don't laugh—Little Women. I find that I am the only girl in college who wasn't brought up on Little Women. I haven't told anybody though (that WOULD stamp me as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last month's allowance; and the next time ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... town with me this morning and see your houses. They are all ready, and Mrs. Gardner has half a dozen poor souls waiting to go in as soon as you give the word," answered the doctor promptly, glad to get his girl back again, though not surprised that she still looked with regretful eyes at the Vanity Fair, always so enticing when we ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... dulled in this sand) to do the job properly, and he bled but little. I could do nothing but wait, so taking a diminutive edition of Thackeray from my pocket, for I had foreseen this long wait, I read a chapter from "Vanity Fair." Presently I got him on his legs and he walked for about thirty yards, then down he went in a heap on the ground; another wait, and more "Vanity Fair." Then on again, and down again, and so on hour after hour. Soon nothing but brutal treatment would make him ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... say, deliberately and of purpose. A French postilion's 'Sacr-r-re'—loud, with the low 'Nom de Dieu' following between his teeth, is not blasphemy, unless against his horse;—but Mr. Thackeray's close of his Waterloo chapter in 'Vanity Fair,' "And all the night long Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his face dead with a bullet through his heart," is blasphemy of the ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... elevate and reform their lives; but he believes that the hope of humanity was potentially shut in an egg, and never in an ark. And there is the "reader upon the sofa,"—church-member he may be,—who tosses aside "Vanity Fair" with the reflection that a gossiping of London snobs is human life, and that the best thing to be done is to pay pew-rates and lie still and gird at it. Which of these two, think you, is the modern representative ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... and his bearing had none of the keen intentness that characterized his associates. The trio carried General Belknap safely through his troubles. The evidence was very remarkable and gave a curious picture of "Vanity Fair." The bargain made by Marsh with the first wife; the huckstering and business matters growing out of it, talked about and discussed over her coffin; the marriage of the Secretary soon after with the sister of the then dead ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... familiar with Washington, and it was difficult to adjust his feelings and perceptions to its peculiarities. Coming out of the sweet sanity of the Bolton household, this was by contrast the maddest Vanity Fair one could conceive. It seemed to him a feverish, unhealthy atmosphere in which lunacy would be easily developed. He fancied that everybody attached to himself an exaggerated importance, from the fact of being at the national capital, the center ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... be in charge of Henry L. Stephens, whose celebrated cartoons in VANITY FAIR placed him in the front rank of humorous artists, assisted by leading artists in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... in June, feeling that life's shadows were lengthening apace, and that not much time remained to her in which to complete her work. The impressions she had made on the society of the gay city had been altogether good. Like the people who stared at the pilgrims passing through Vanity Fair, the Parisians wondered, and understood for the first time that here was a lady who did indeed pass through things temporal, "with eyes fixed on things eternal"; and whose supreme delight lay, not in ball-rooms, ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... slowly. "Catherine," "The Great Hoggarty Diamond," "Barry Lyndon," and several volumes of travel had failed to gain much attention before the "Snob Papers," issued in "Punch" in 1846, brought him fame. In the January of the next year "Vanity Fair" began to appear in monthly numbers, and by the time it was finished Thackeray had taken his place in the front rank of his profession. "Pendennis" followed in 1850, and sustained the prestige he ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... separation is exaltation. We leave the muddy pleasures of Sodom and we "drink of the river of His pleasures." We leave "the garish day," and all the feverish life of Vanity Fair, and He maketh us "to lie down in green pastures," "He leadeth us beside the still waters." We leave a transient sensation, we receive the bread of eternity. We forfeit fireworks, we gain ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... tradition goes back to books instead of life. Middle-sized authors—the very good and the probably enduring—are successful largely because they have gripped a tradition and followed it through to contemporary life. This is what Thackeray did in "Vanity Fair," Howells in "The Rise of Silas Lapham," and Mrs. Wharton in "The House of Mirth." But the back- to-nature books—both the sound ones and those shameless exposures of the private emotions of ground hogs and turtles that call themselves nature books—are ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... have been since—since we met last? You are looking extremely well. Has Vanity Fair palled in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... one, Paris must be nothing better than a vast frippery shop, an ever-varying galantee show, an eternal vanity fair, a vortex of folly, a pandemonium ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... if they did something in the line of honest and honorable toil to support themselves, rather than live on the heart's blood of an unselfish and overworked father; and as for the wife who exacts the income of a duchess to keep up the silly parade of Vanity Fair, there may come a day for her, when, shorn of the generous and loving support of a good husband, and forced to earn her own livelihood, as the penniless widows of bankrupt men are sometimes forced to do, she will appreciate, ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... away, leaving Harriet with a strange sense of nervousness and suspense. The summer air seemed charged with menace, and the silence that followed the noise of the car oddly ominous. She looked about nervously; Nina was drifting through Vanity Fair, the sun was warm, and the air sweet and still. But still her heart was beating madly, and she felt ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... Christian on his way to the Celestial City? Who has not laid at night his young head on the pillow, to paint on the walls of darkness pictures of the Wicket Gate and the Archers, the Hill of Difficulty, the Lions and Giants, Doubting Castle and Vanity Fair, the sunny Delectable Mountains and the Shepherds, the Black River and the wonderful glory beyond it; and at last fallen asleep, to dream over the strange story, to hear the sweet welcomings of the sisters at the House Beautiful, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... with these events, and have drawn out the persons who were involved in Hosley's career by many conversations. If this statement does not satisfy, then I have one that will. I quote that great authority, William Makepeace Thackeray, who tells us in Vanity Fair that a novelist is supposed to know everything, and am I not treating the subject as a novelist, using for the most part fictitious names and places to shield from public ridicule the good people whose ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... restaurants are crowded with gaily-dressed merry-makers; and altogether there is a sense of festivity in the air, without any flagrantly meretricious element in it, which I plead guilty to finding very enjoyable. From the moral, and even from the loftily aesthetic point of view, this gaudy, glittering Vanity Fair is no doubt open to criticism. What reconciles me to it aesthetically is the gemlike transparency of its colouring. Garish it is, no doubt, but not in the least stifling, smoky, or lurid. The application of electricity—light divorced from smoke and heat—to the beautifying of city life ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... record of his spiritual torments, thought of it chiefly as a running fight with the Devil. Outside the covers of the Bible, little existed save temptations for the soul. No sentence in The Pilgrim's Progress is more suggestive of Bunyan's view of life than that in which the merchandise of Vanity Fair is described as including "delights of all sorts, as whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not." It is no wonder that one to ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Punch, nevertheless, that his first real triumph was won. The "Snob Papers" attracted universal attention, and were still running when he moved to Young Street. Here he began more serious work, and scarcely a year later "Vanity Fair" was brought out in numbers, according to the fashion made popular by Dickens. It did not prove an instantaneous success, but by the time it had run its course its author's position was assured. In spite of the sorrow that overshadowed his domestic life—and he ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... a letter to Garrick, of the 29th of March in this year, says—"I met Mr. Gray at dinner last Sunday: he spoke handsomely of your happy knack of epilogues; but he calls the Stratford Jubilee, Vanity Fair." See Garrick Correspondence, vol. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... and then dwelling for a moment or two upon his own mental and physical declension from the admirable being he once was. He reached the height of his absurdity in describing the resistance of the two pilgrims to the manifold temptations of Vanity Fair, which he so set forth as to take from Christian and Faithful the smallest possible appearance of merit in turning their ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... devoted to a portrayal of existing men and manners. The field is a wide one. The characters may be taken from any class of society. The society novel may bring before us, as in Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," what is known as fashionable life. It may again, as in George Eliot's "Adam Bede" or Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," introduce us to the lives of plain people. It may acquaint us, as in Du Maurier's "Trilby," with the Bohemian or artist class in our great cities. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... so compelled. But not all. I should like to set next to Mr. Belloc's passage a passage from the book of another pilgrim. Bunyan, when he wrote Pilgrim's Progress, may not have referred directly to the Way from Winchester to Canterbury, though his 'Vanity Fair' has been guessed to correspond with Shalford Fair, and other details of the progress have been fitted in with other happenings, as we shall see at Shalford. But unquestionably he reproduces the state of mind with which a pilgrim ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... also be stated as an effect of this excursion into Vanity Fair, that when he woke the next morning he was in some doubt as to whether he should visit his Congressman or send for that individual to call upon him. He had felt the subtle flattery of attention from that section of colored society which ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... novel it is the same thing. Popular authority and the recognition of popular authority are fatal. Thackeray's 'Esmond' is a beautiful work of art because he wrote it to please himself. In his other novels, in 'Pendennis,' in 'Philip,' in 'Vanity Fair' even, at times, he is too conscious of the public, and spoils his work by appealing directly to the sympathies of the public, or by directly mocking at them. A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent. ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... amid the tobacco smoke and the cheap applause of popular assemblies and on the vanity fair of the professional social patron; in the brilliance of glittering feasts I sought her and in the twilit silence of domestic comfort.... And I ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... a gay lunch at a cafe, and a first brief glimpse of the Louvre. At dinner-time I found a posy at my place; and afterward Laddie came and spent the evening in my little salon, playing to me, and having what he called 'babblings and pleasantries.' I found that he was translating 'Vanity Fair' into Polish, and intended to sell it at home. He convulsed me with his struggles to put cockney English and slang into good Polish, for he had saved up a list of words for me to explain to him. Hay-stack and bean-pot ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... into his power. For a time the way of transgressors is made easy and pleasant. The broad road is shaded, and edged with fair fruits and flowers. The down-hill path is strewn with glittering jewels, the booths of vanity fair are fitted with all manner of delights, and the poor slave goes on, scarce feeling his chains, or knowing of his slavery, till the day of reckoning comes. "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... is apt to take a most desponding view of the situation. Thus Englishmen reading the accounts of men who fought at Waterloo are too ready to disbelieve representations of what was taking place in the rear of the army, and to think Thackeray's life-like picture in Vanity Fair of the state of Brussels must be overdrawn. Indeed, in this very battle of Waterloo, Zieten began to retreat when his help was most required, because one of his aides de camp told him that the right wing of the English was in full retreat. "This inexperienced young man," ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... important city of Greece. The commerce of the world flowed through its two harbours. The population consisted of Greeks, Jews, Italians, and a mixed multitude; it was excitable, pleasure loving, and mercurial. In this city was held a perpetual vanity fair. The vices of the east and west met and clasped hands in the work of human degradation. The Greek goddess Aphrodite had a magnificent temple in which a thousand priestesses ministered to a base worship. While it was a center of wealth and fashion it was ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... is the club most difficult of access in the world. To be placed on its rolls distinguishes the new member as greatly as though he had received a vacant Garter or had been caricatured in "Vanity Fair." ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... does not confine himself to chronicling small beer. Mr. Crawley's collision with the Bishop's wife, Mr. Melnotte dallying in the deserted banquet-room, are typical incidents, epically conceived, fitly embodying a crisis. Or again look at Thackeray. If Rawdon Crawley's blow were not delivered, VANITY FAIR would cease to be a work of art. That scene is the chief ganglion of the tale; and the discharge of energy from Rawdon's fist is the reward and consolation of the reader. The end of ESMOND is a yet wider ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is absurd to suppose that upon such evidence any judge and jury could have convicted her of murder.'—VANITY FAIR. ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... Zadig and Micromegas Goethe's Faust, and Autobiography Thackeray's Vanity Fair Pendennis Dickens' Pickwick David Copperfield Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii George Eliot's Adam Bede Kingsley's ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... ornament, is rather too prominent in the picture. The long galleries of black oak, the formal furniture, the old portraits, are picturesque, but depressing. The house is damp. I enjoy myself better here on the lawn, where they are getting up a Vanity Fair. See, the bell rings, the curtain is rising, the puppets are brought out for a new play. Let ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... history and geography. The authors of the Old Testament talked about "the hare that cheweth the cud." And, if any reader should fail to see the application of these instances to modern fiction, I can only recommend him to read Vanity Fair and find out how many children had the Rev. Bute Crawley, and what were their names. No, the trouble with Manalive is not in its casual, happy-go-lucky construction. It is rather in a certain lack of ease, a tendency to exaggerate effects, a continual stirring up ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... our pedlar's pack to carry through Vanity Fair; but how good for us to turn aside into some of Nature's holy places which she keeps so fair and sweet and untainted, and to take a long draught ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... suggested by a governess who lived in the neighbourhood of Kensington Square, and was the companion of a very selfish and rich old woman. I inquired what became of the governess, and she replied that, oddly enough, some years after the appearance of Vanity Fair, she ran away with the nephew of the lady with whom she was living, and for a short time made a great splash in society, quite in Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's style, and entirely by Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... at home yesterday, dear Hal, and spent the evening in reading "Vanity Fair." It is extremely clever, but hitherto I do not like it very much. I began it at Bannisters last Winter, and then I did not like it, wonderfully clever as I thought it. Lord Ellesmere says it is better than anything of the kind (novels of manners and morals) since Fielding; but ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... to him, with one hand on the table, resting upon the closed volume of "Vanity Fair," but instead of looking at her brother she was gazing calmly ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... of "The New York Idea" was not Mr. Mitchell's first dramatic work for Mrs. Fiske. At the New York Fifth Avenue Theatre, on September 12, 1899, she appeared in "Becky Sharp," his successful version of Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," which held the stage for some time, and was later revived with considerable renewal of its former interest. Two years after, rival versions were presented in London, one by David Balsillie (Theatre Royal, Croydon, June 24, 1901) and the other by Robert Hichens ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... 'Vanity Fair' was an inspiration. It gives the ideas of the disharmonies that can be found in any market place in any English market town on any English market day. It brings out 'the irrelevancy of Thackeray.' ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... trade of the country was largely carried on during this period by great fairs held at stated times by royal license. Bunyan, in "Pilgrim's Progress," gives a vivid picture of one of these centers of trade and dissipation, under the name of "Vanity Fair." Though it represents the great fair of Sturbridge, near Cambridge, as he saw it in the seventeenth century, yet it undoubtably describes similar gatherings in ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... walking two miles through the snow with rags tied around his feet for shoes, to borrow the history of the French Revolution, and eagerly devouring it before the sap-bush fire; a Milton, elaborating "Paradise Lost" in a world he could not see; a Thackeray, struggling on cheerfully after his "Vanity Fair" was refused by a dozen publishers; a Balzac, toiling and waiting in a lonely garret; men whom neither poverty, debt, nor hunger could discourage or intimidate; not daunted by privations, not hindered by discouragements. It wants men ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... both by Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Thackeray. In "Vanity Fair" we find it described as the temporary abode of the impecunious Colonel Crawley, and Moss describes his uncomfortable past and present guests in a manner worthy of Fielding himself. There is the "Honourable Capting Famish, of the Fiftieth Dragoons, whose ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... cocked beaver and a jemmy cane; his amice gray to the last Regent Street cut; and his painful palmer's pace to the modern swagger! Stop thy friend's sacrilegious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible,—the Vanity Fair and the Pilgrims there; the silly-soothness in his setting-out countenance; the Christian idiocy (in a good sense) of his admiration of the shepherds on the Delectable mountains; the lions so truly allegorical, and remote from ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... of a century before, to which giddy daughters dragged unwilling papas, or went with injudicious friends, to the detriment of all their better qualities, and sometimes to the ruin of their fortunes; it was the Vanity Fair of ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... for the night. Counting up the days (with some difficulty: it seemed as though I had been away from home a month), I remembered that this was Saturday night. I thought I would stay in Bath over Sunday and get a good rest. We jogged sedately along the road, and I got out a copy of "Vanity Fair." I was so absorbed in Becky Sharp that I wouldn't even interrupt myself to sell books at the houses we passed. I think reading a good book makes one modest. When you see the marvellous insight into human nature which a truly great book shows, it is bound to make you feel small—like ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... struggles mightily till Helpful stretches him a hand and drags him out on solid ground and bids him go on his way. Then come Interpreter's house, the Palace Beautiful, the Lions in the way, the Valley of Humiliation, the hard fight with the demon Apollyon, the more terrible Valley of the Shadow, Vanity Fair, and the trial of Faithful. The latter is condemned to death by a jury made up of Mr. Blindman, Mr. Nogood, Mr. Heady, Mr. Liveloose, Mr. Hatelight, and others of their kind to whom questions of justice are committed by the jury system. Most famous is Doubting Castle, where ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Catherine of Arragon, and Thomas Cromwell (in his youth better known as the Malleus Monachorum), and had made them dance a break-down. I had also dramatised "The Pilgrim's Progress" for a Christmas Pantomime, and made an important scene of Vanity Fair, with Mr Greatheart, Apollyon, Christiana, Mercy, and Hopeful as the principal characters. The orchestra played music taken from Handel's best known works, but the time was a good deal altered, and altogether the tunes were not exactly as Handel left them. Mr Greatheart was very stout and he had ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... over the heterogeneous collection of articles around. These were abundantly familiar to him—the long dressing-table, with all its appliances for making-up, the mirrors, the wigs on blocks, the gay-colored garments, the fencing-foils and swords, the framed series of portraits from "Vanity Fair," the innumerable photographs stuck everywhere about. Indeed, it was something not immediately connected with these paraphernalia of an actor's existence that seemed to be occupying his mind, even as he idly regarded ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... grace and energy, but for sure without the strong impression, the full, dark brush. Three people have had it, the real creator's brush: Scott, see much of THE ANTIQUARY and THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN (especially all round the trial, before, during, and after) - Balzac - and Thackeray in VANITY FAIR. Everybody else either paints THIN, or has to stop to paint, or paints excitedly, so that you see the author skipping before his canvas. Here is a long ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scarce done speaking, when his mistress came in. The colloquy between him and Beatrix had lasted but a few minutes, during which time Esmond's servant had carried the disastrous news through the household. The army of Vanity Fair, waiting without, gathered up all their fripperies and fled aghast. Tender Lady Castlewood had been in talk above with Dean Atterbury, the pious creature's almoner and director; and the dean had entered with her as a physician whose place was ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "A regular 'Vanity Fair' problem," Richard declared, balancing his wine glass between his fingers, "a problem, too, which I can't say I have solved altogether yet. The only thing is that if he is really going to-night, I don't see why I shouldn't let the matter drift out ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in 1848, and at once placed its author in the front rank of novelists. It was followed by "Pendennis" in 1850, "Esmond" in 1852, "The Newcomes" in 1855, and "The Virginians" in 1859. Some critics profess to see manifested in "Vanity Fair" a certain sharpness and sarcasm in Thackeray's character which does not appear in his later works, but however much the author may have mellowed in his later novels, "Vanity Fair" continues to be his acknowledged masterpiece, and of all the characters he ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... back, with sudden decorum, to this Lady Tressady, whom he had been commissioned to take in to dinner. "Quite pretty, but rather—well, ordinary!" he said to himself, with a critical coolness bred of much familiarity with the best things of Vanity Fair. He had been Ancoats's friend at Cambridge, and was now disporting himself in the Guards, but still more—as Letty of course assumed—in the heart of the English well-born world. She knew that he was ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the deferential servant of the house, on which he would place the dear lady's spectacles and a book, its ivory marker showing where the last reading had ended—it might be Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella," or Irving's "Granada," or Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... him, however dexterous might be such a man's manipulation of difficult arguments. His talent, too, scarcely lent itself to the art of indirect intimations of his opinions. He remarks himself, in one of his letters, that he is about as clever at giving hints as the elder Osborne in 'Vanity Fair'; of whom Thackeray says that he would give what he called a 'hint' to a footman to leave his service by kicking the man downstairs. And, therefore, I suspect that when Fitzjames considered someone—even ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... wrong,' I returned, with more earnestness than the occasion warranted. 'I feel a strange reluctance to re-enter Vanity Fair. The splendours of a gay wedding are not to my taste. Sara tells me that her reception after the ceremony will be attended by about two hundred guests. To me the idea is simply barbarous. I expect I shall be heartily glad to ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... deferential compliment of asking what books you are reading. It maybe you are just out of the profound philosophical complexities and pathetic problems of "Les Miserables." Perhaps you have immersed yourself again in the paradoxes of "Vanity Fair," or have been pumping up the flabby tires of your better nature with the fresh air of "David Copperfield." It is possible that "Tess of the Durbervilles," or "A Window in Thrums" has been newly received, and has been enlightening your mind ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... confess, not very much. Plot I regard as the least essential element in the novelist's art. A novel can take the very highest rank without it. There is not any plot to speak of in Lesage's "Gil Blas," and just as little in Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," and only a very bad one in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield." Coleridge admired the plot of "Tom Jones," but though one naturally hesitates to differ from a critic of such superb mastery and power, I confess I have ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... Earl of Yarmouth (1777-1842), succeeded his father as second Marquis of Hertford in 1822. The colossal libertinism and patrician splendour of his life inspired Disraeli to paint him as "Monmouth" in 'Coningsby', and Thackeray as "Steyne" in 'Vanity Fair'. He married, in 1798, Maria Fagniani, claimed as a daughter by George Selwyn and by "Old Q.," and enriched by both. Yarmouth, as an intimate friend of the Regent, and the son of the Prince's female favourite, was the butt of Moore and the Whig satirists. Byron gibes at Yarmouth's red ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Fair for a title, and Vanity Fair is a very vain foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falseness and pretentions. One is bound to speak the truth, as one knows it, whether one mounts a cap and bells, or a shovel hat; and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... his daughter, Good-Humour, and her affianced husband, Mr. Hate-Cant; but if he ever saw them in the distance he steered clear of them, probably as feeling that they would be more dangerous than Giant Despair, Vanity Fair and Apollyon all together—for they would have stuck to him if he had let them get in with him. Among other things they would have told him that, if there was any truth in his opinions, neither man nor woman ought to become a ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... a sip of Thackeray, reading at a venture, in "Vanity Fair," about the Battle of Waterloo. It was not like Lever's accounts of battles, but it was enchanting. However, "Vanity Fair" was under a taboo. It is not easy to say why; but Mr. Thackeray himself informed a small boy, whom ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... through the dismal Vale of Humiliation, and there meet in deadly fight the terrible monster Apollyon; then through the Valley and Shadow of Death, with all its doleful sights and sounds; then through the wicked city of Vanity Fair; then through the gloomy domains of Doubting Castle and Giant Despair,—all before he could hope to set foot on these Delectable Mountains ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... Vanity Fair: "This very sprightly novel on the stamp-collecting mania is most amusing, and might be just the thing for a present to young folks who are ardent collectors and readers of cheery, harmless fiction. It is excellently 'got up,' ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... are either directly or indirectly taken from the Bible. It has given us a long list of phrases which are part of our literary and religious capital. Thackeray took the motto of one of his best-known books from the Bible; but the title, Vanity Fair, comes from Pilgrim's Progress. When a discouraged man says he is "in the slough of despond," he quotes Bunyan; and when a popular evangelist tells the people that the burden of sin will roll away if they look at the cross, "according to the Bible," he ought to say according ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... a "Pickwick Exam." invented by CALVERLEY the Inimitable. Why not a "Pendennis" or "Vanity Fair" Exam.? A propos, I would just ask one question of the Thackerayan student, and it is this:—There was one Becky whom everybody knows, but there was another BECKY as good, as kind, as sympathetic, and as ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 20, 1892 • Various
... side of war. It is only when you are ten years away from it, or ten thousand miles away from it, that you forget the dull places, and only the moments loom up which are terrible, picturesque, and momentous. We have read, in "Vanity Fair," of the terror and the mad haste to escape of the people of Brussels on the eve of Waterloo. That is ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... reading when she was a child, and it was too late to learn now. Still, on being persuaded to think that she might at least try, she expressed an ambition to enjoy Thackeray, and asked to have his best novel recommended. "Vanity Fair" was accordingly suggested as most likely to please her, and, it being procured, she announced on the following evening that she had read thirty pages that day, and meant to continue at the same ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... thee, a far weaker man by nature than thou art; also this Giant has wounded me as well as thee, and hath also cut off the Bread and Water from my mouth; and with thee I mourn without the light. But let's exercise a little more patience, remember how thou playedst the man at Vanity Fair, and wast neither afraid of the Chain, nor Cage, nor yet of bloody Death: wherefore let us (at least to avoid the shame that becomes not a Christian to be found in) bear up with patience as well ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... them rogues—has been the country most slandered by history precisely because it championed the Counter-Reformation. And because its arrogance has prevented it from stepping down into the public forum, into the world's vanity fair, and publishing its ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... true pilgrim, but one of a different temperament, so that his trials and other experiences have been different, but the two proceed on their journey together happy in good companionship. They pass through Vanity Fair, and Faithful ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... forces us to be candid with ourselves, then it can be reconciled, not only with the cardinal virtues—which are but a chilly quartette—but with the flaming charities which have consumed the souls of saints. The true humourist, objects Sir Leslie Stephen, sees the world as a tragi-comedy, a Vanity Fair, in which enthusiasm is out of place. But if the true humourist also sees himself presiding, in the sacred name of duty, over a booth in Vanity Fair, he may yet reach perfection. What Father Faber opposed so strenuously were, not ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... craze is after all only a sign and sample of the prevailing growth and extent of fashionable luxury. Nowhere in the world, I suppose, is this more conspicuous than in Paris, the very Vanity Fair of mundane pleasure. The hostesses of dinners, dances and fetes vie with one another in seeking bizarre and extravagant effects. Here is a good example of it taken from actual life the other day. It is an account of an "oriental fete" given at a ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... Greatheart, etc., & the other Bunyan characters, take them to a wild gorge and photograph them—Valley of the Shadow of Death; to other effective places & photo them along with the scenery; to Paris, in their curious costumes, place them near the Arc de l'Etoile & photo them with the crowd-Vanity Fair; to Cairo, Venice, Jerusalem, & other places (twenty interesting cities) & always make them conspicuous in the curious foreign crowds by their costume. Take them to Zululand. It would take two or three ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... read" "Everything that I could get hold of, novelists, poetry, history and travel." "What novelist do you like best" The answer came prompt and decisive: "Dickens," "Why?" "He loved the poor, he shows a greater belief in humanity than Thackeray." "How do you prove that?" "Well, take Thackeray's VANITY FAIR, it is clever and satirical, but there is only one good character, and he was a fool; but in Dickens you come across character after character that you can't ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... am taking it for granted that you will not refuse me, so I will proceed to tell you our arrangements. Mamma and I have been in town the last five weeks, and we are both of us tired to death of Vanity Fair, so we mean to go back to Oatlands next week. You may come to us as soon after that as you like; fix your own day and your train, and I will be at the station ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... however, was to visit Vauxhall before its gates were closed for the last time,—the Amelia beloved of all readers of "Vanity Fair." Naturally, she does not go alone. Thackeray had too much affection for that gentle creature to make her face such an ordeal. No, there was the careless, high-spirited George Osborne, and the ever-faithful ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... Pilgrim's Progress. This is the story of Christian's journey through this life, the story of meeting Mr. Worldly Wiseman, of the straight gate and the narrow path, of the Delectable Mountains of Youth, of the valley of Humiliation, of the encounter with Apollyon, of the wares of Vanity Fair, "kept all the year long," of my lord Time-server, of Mr. Anything, of imprisonment in Doubting Castle by Giant Despair, of the flowery land of Beulah, lying beyond the valley of the Shadow of Death, through which a deep, cold river runs, and of the city of All Delight on ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Thorne," she continued, "may I ask how came you here in my father's house after having treated me so cavalierly in London?— not even sending a P.P.C. when you vanished from your worshippers in Vanity Fair." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in his face that he is at peace with himself—that he is no longer at war with his elements. His society, if you are fond of goodness, is both agreeable and medicinal; but if you are a bad man it is hateful, and you cry out with Mr. Love-lust in Bunyan's Vanity Fair: 'Away with him. I cannot endure him; he is for ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Edinburgh. But he feared nothing. He was going into the wilderness after his own stray sheep, and he had a conviction that any path of duty is a safe path. He said little to any one. The people looked strangely on him. He almost fancied himself to be Christian going through Vanity Fair. ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... a wonderful reversal of judgments one day! Names that now fill the trumpet of fame will fall silent. Pages that now are read as if they were leaves of the 'Book of Life' will be obliterated and unknown, and when all the flashing cressets in Vanity Fair have smoked and stunk themselves out, 'They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.' The great things are the Christian things, and there was no greater deed done that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... concrete shape in his imagination as men, women, cities, landscapes. It is the simplest, the most transparent of allegories. Unlike the Faery Queene, the story of Pilgrim's Progress has no reason for existing apart from its inner meaning, and yet its reality is so vivid that children read of Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle and the Valley of the Shadow of Death with the same belief with which they read of Crusoe's cave ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... even to approach completeness, it must be remembered that we are not describing an ascetic or a recluse, but the most polished gentleman, the most fascinating companion, the most graceful and attractive figure, in the Vanity Fair of social life. He is full of ardour, zeal, and emotion, endowed with a physical activity which corresponds to his mental alertness, and young with that perpetual youth which is the reward of "a conscience void of offence toward God and ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... attitude too was stooping, yet his dress and bald white head made him the most conspicuous figure of the group. He was an ecclesiastic: he was Pere Silas. Do not fancy, reader, that there was any inconsistency in the priest's presence at this fete. This was not considered a show of Vanity Fair, but a commemoration of patriotic sacrifice. The Church patronised it, even with ostentation. There were troops of priests in the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... reading this admirable volume of essays when news of the author's death was transmitted across the sea. And now we are to look no longer at our shelf which holds "Vanity Fair," "Fendennis," "The Newcomes," and "Henry Esmond," and think of the writer's busy brain as still actively engaged over new and delightful books destined some day to claim their places beside the companion-volumes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... man is the important man. We do not think so day by day, we idle observers of our Vanity Fair, we curbstone watchers of the street parade. We think it is the conspicuous man who counts. Our attention is mostly for him who wears the epaulettes of prominence and favorable condition. Therefore most articles, papers, and ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... shopped. My aunt did not shine as a purchaser. It is a curious thing, due to I know not what fine strain in her composition, that my aunt never set any great store upon possessions. She plunged through that crowded bazaar of Vanity Fair during those feverish years, spending no doubt freely and largely, but spending with detachment and a touch of humorous contempt for the things, even the "old" things, that money can buy. It came to me suddenly one afternoon just how detached ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... the Vanity Fair of Jargon behind us, we have to essay a difficult country; of which, though fairly confident of his compass-bearings, your guide confesses, that wide tracts lie outside his knowledge—outside of anything that can properly be called his ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... been for lack of material, but of a proper editorial faculty, and from the want of a habitude or a willingness on the part of those who conceive clever things to note them down and give them out in black and white. When "Vanity Fair" first appeared, we thought we saw in it the germ of a journal which might be an exponent of our national spirit of mirthfulness, and we took occasion to say so briefly. We have not been disappointed. The five volumes which have already been published in weekly numbers have been true to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... you would have beheld a sight very well worth while looking upon. There were no fine houses at that time, and no great counting-houses built of brick, such as you may find nowadays, but a crowd of board and wattled huts huddled along the streets, and all so gay with flags and bits of color that Vanity Fair itself could not have been gayer. To this place came all the pirates and buccaneers that infested those parts, and men shouted and swore and gambled, and poured out money like water, and then maybe wound up their merrymaking by dying of fever. For the sky in these ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... Empire City, Mr. Browne soon opened an engagement with "Vanity Fair," a humorous paper after the manner of London "Punch," and ere long he succeeded Mr. Charles G. Leland as editor. Mr. Charles Dawson Shanly says: "After Artemus Ward became sole editor, a position which he held for a brief period, many of his best contributions were given to the ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... right. We've a long way to go yet, for the Valley of Humiliation comes only half-way in the Pilgrim's Progress. The next stage was Vanity Fair. I might be of some use there, ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... read through the 'Dutch Original,' and made notes from it;—there is not the slightest resemblance in it to anything in the 'Pilgrim's Progress. The three striking circumstances which you mentioned of the 'Hill of Difficulty,' the 'Slough of Despond,' and 'Vanity Fair,' do not afford any ground for supposing that Bunyan had ever heard of this book; or that even if he had read it, he should have taken one hint from it. Here the incidents are, 1st that the wilful Pilgrim stops ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... to look upon the amazing spectacle presented by the dwellers at the capital was afforded. The things seen by the Pilgrims in a dream were at this Vanity Fair visible in the flesh: "all such merchandise sold as houses, lands, trades, places, honors, preferments, states, lusts, pleasures; and delights of all sorts, as bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... picturesque. It is, to be sure, an allegory, but one of those allegories which seem inherent in the human mind and hence more natural than the most direct narrative. For all men life is indeed a journey, and the Slough of Despond, Doubting Castle, Vanity Fair, and the Valley of Humiliation are places where in one sense or another every human soul has often struggled and suffered; so that every reader goes hand in hand with Christian and his friends, fears for them in their dangers and rejoices in their escapes. The ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... last Regent Street cut, and his painful Palmer's pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend's sacriligious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the pilgrims there—the silly soothness in his setting out countenance—the Christian idiocy (in a good sense) of his admiration of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains—the Lions so truly ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with love. Blessed are the people who can laugh! Laughter is religion and hope; and the apostles of good nature, who see the bright side of life, the queer and funny things among men, the clowns in Vanity Fair, as well as the deep and terrible pathos of life, are missionaries of comfort ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... admire, with a certain smiling admiration, at the hands of Mr. Lang and Mr. Dobson; such, too, are those canvases where dexterity or even breadth of plastic style takes the place of pictorial nobility of design. So, it may be remarked, it was easier to begin to write Esmond than Vanity Fair, since, in the first, the style was dictated by the nature of the plan; and Thackeray, a man probably of some indolence of mind, enjoyed and got good profit of this economy of effort. But the case is exceptional. Usually in all works of art that have been conceived ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... acquired of late a fashion of looking up. There had been a time when he had kept his eyes on the ground. He did not care to remember that time. The work that he did was intermittent, and between his industrious spasms he read a book. He had a shelf at hand where he kept certain volumes—Walt Whitman, Vanity Fair, Austin Dobson, Landor's Imaginary Conversations, and a rather choice collection of Old Mission literature. He had had it in mind that he might some day write a play with Santa Barbara as a background, but he had stopped after the first act. He had ridden down one night and had ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... was a fall against it of four shot corpses; and Robert barely managed to get home across the bridges. He had been out walking in the city, apprehending nothing, when the storm gathered and broke. Sad and humiliating it all has been, and the author of 'Vanity Fair' might turn it to better uses for a chapter. By the way, we have just been reading 'Vanity Fair.' Very clever, very effective, but cruel to human nature. A painful book, and not the pain that purifies and exalts. Partial ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... but he did not complete a collegiate course of study. He began his literary career as a contributor to "Fraser's Magazine," under the assumed name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh, and afterwards contributed to the column of "Punch." The first novel published under Thackeray's own name was "Vanity Fair," which is regarded by many as his greatest work. He afterwards wrote a large number of novels, tales, and poems, most of which were illustrated by sketches drawn by himself. His course of "Lectures on the English Humorists" was delivered ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... all powers do homage and all subjects are subservient. In this great balance of utility, the spiritual service of art has no weight, and, deprived of all encouragement, it vanishes from the noisy Vanity Fair of our time. The very spirit of philosophical inquiry itself robs the imagination of one promise after another, and the frontiers of art are narrowed, in proportion as the limits of science ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... placidly surveying the scene of preparation, a meditative spectator might have possibly compared him to the hero of the engraving "Moses going to the fair," that was then hanging just over his head; for no one could have set out for the great Oxford booth of this Vanity Fair with more simplicity and trusting confidence than ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... feather or to drown a fly,"—definitely expressed in art. Even Spenser, I think, has only partially expressed it under the figure of Phaedria, more properly Idle Mirth, in the second book. The idea is, however, entirely worked out in the Vanity Fair of the ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... brothers and sisters in the world, takes advantage of it to make himself a fame and a fortune. Nash, the son of a glass-merchant—Brummell, the hopeful of a small shopkeeper—became the intimates of princes, dukes, and fashionables; were petty kings of Vanity Fair, and were honoured by their subjects. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king; in the realm of folly, the sharper is a monarch. The only proviso is, that the cheat come not within the jurisdiction of the law. Such a cheat ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... woman would rather be handsome than good." That may be true in heathen, but it is not true of all in Christian climes. If there is one woman who thinks more of dress than duty, more of shadow than substance, more of Vanity Fair than of Virtue's bower, then beware. You are not an ally of Christ. At once begin a new life, if you would shun the dangers and avoid the terrible doom threatening you. Cast away that which excites passions and gives the body ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... would. She had risen with him and shared his later anxieties. Yet she had seen him forget, neglect her, and seek other society. In spite of his tender affection for her and for his children, he had never made a home of their home. Vanity Fair had kept him ever flitting, and it is little to be wondered at that Mrs. Sheridan was the object of much, though ever respectful admiration.[9] Yet, in spite of calumny, she died with a fair fame. Decline had long ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... satire of Juvenal is directed mainly to the universal passion for gain and the demoralizing vices it brings in its train, which made Rome a Vanity Fair and even ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... "I have heard of such a place. It is a kind of Vanity Fair, isn't it, for all the cocottes ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... door and then stood in the middle of the room; the little diamond-paned window was open and the glittering of the myriad stars flung a light over his room and shone on the little bracket of books above his bed (a Bible, an "Arabian Nights," and tattered copies of "David Copperfield," "Vanity Fair," "Peregrine Pickle," "Tom Jones," and "Harry Lorrequer"), on the little washing stand, a chest of drawers, a cane-bottomed chair, and the little bed. There were no pictures on the walls because of the sloping roof, but there were two china vases on the mantelpiece, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... dirt. Why other wild things should be delicately clean, the birds, the fishes she lived on, and she be bred amidst running sores and vermin, was one of the mysteries I pondered over when we took to our canoes. For such a pair of eyes, for those exquisite features, some scraggy denizen of Vanity Fair would have given a king's ransom. Yet here was a thing of beauty, dropped by a vile freak of Nature into an appalling environment of filth and ignorance; a creature destined, no doubt, to spring into mature womanhood, and lapse, in time, into a counterpart ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... By William M. Thackeray, author of "Vanity Fair," "History of Pendennis," etc. It is equal in every respect to "Vanity Fair." Price ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... of and at art exhibitions, is certainly not of Art, nor is he of business. He takes no account whatever, apparently, of time, as men of business do; and manifestly one could not work in such a moustache and such clothes without mussing them. He is, in fine, of Vanity Fair. Oscar Wilde was, as usual, wrong when he said that all beautiful things were quite useless. This immaculate young man's practical function at art exhibitions, as perhaps elsewhere, is that ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday |
