Vanity Fair Annotated

by William Makepeace Thackeray

Vanity Fair,

Vanity Fair,

Vanity Fair, which satirises those values.

Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; not a moral place certainly;

I have no other moral than this to tag to the present story of "Vanity Fair."

The pompous vanity of the old schoolmistress,

He was as vain as a girl; and perhaps his extreme shyness was one of the results of his extreme vanity.

"Vanity Fair" for a title, and that Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.

O Vanity Fair—Vanity Fair!

Vanity Fair:

Vanity Fair—Vanity Fair! Here was a man, who could not spell, and did not care to read—who had the habits and the cunning of a boor:

Great ministers and statesmen courted him; and in Vanity Fair he had a higher place than the most brilliant genius or spotless virtue.

A system of hypocrisy, which lasts through whole years, is one seldom satisfactorily practised by a person of one-and-twenty; however, our readers will recollect, that, though young in years, our heroine was old in life and experience, and we have written to no purpose if they have not discovered that she was a very clever woman.

My mind shudders when I think of her awful, awful situation, and that, near as she is to the grave, she should be so given up to vanity, licentiousness, profaneness, and folly."

These money transactions—these speculations in life and death—these silent battles for reversionary spoil—make brothers very loving towards each other in Vanity Fair.

By Jove, it is. The infamous dog has got every vice except hypocrisy, and that belongs to his brother."

There were half the carriages of Vanity Fair at the wedding.

change from Vanity Fair and Park Lane for another world;

Mothers and daughters are making the same bargain every day in Vanity Fair.

What well-bred young person is there in all Vanity Fair, who will not feel for a hard-working, ingenious, meritorious girl, who gets such an honourable, advantageous, provoking offer, just at the very moment when it is out of her power to accept it?

If there is any exhibition in all Vanity Fair which Satire and Sentiment can visit arm in arm together; where you light on the strangest contrasts laughable and tearful: where you may be gentle and pathetic, or savage and cynical with perfect propriety: it is at one of those public assemblies,

Even with the most selfish disposition, the Vanity Fairian, as he witnesses this sordid part of the obsequies of a departed friend, can't but feel some sympathies and regret.

but only wished to take that fair advantage of him which almost every sporting gentleman in Vanity Fair considers to be his due from his neighbour.

in those booths of Vanity Fair people seldom do miss each other.

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.

the French Emperor comes in to perform a part in this domestic comedy of Vanity Fair which we are now playing,

this venerable inhabitant of Vanity Fair had as free notions about religion and morals as Monsieur de Voltaire himself could desire,

But, without preaching, the truth may surely be borne in mind, that the bustle, and triumph, and laughter, and gaiety which Vanity Fair exhibits in public, do not always pursue the performer into private life, and that the most dreary depression of spirits and dismal repentances sometimes overcome him.

Perhaps in Vanity Fair there are no better satires than letters.

Nabob—

There ought to be a law in Vanity Fair ordering the destruction of every written document

The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one that faded utterly in a couple of days, and left the paper clean and blank, so that you might write on it to somebody else.

And here he paused, reflecting on his own consummate hypocrisy;

Pity the fallen gentleman: you to whom money and fair repute are the chiefest good; and so, surely, are they in Vanity Fair.

Beyond the first smile of recognition—and even that was an hypocrisy, for she thought his arrival rather provoking—Miss Sedley did not once notice Dobbin during his visit.

People in Vanity Fair fasten on to rich folks quite naturally.

perhaps my readers may have remarked in their experience of this Vanity Fair of ours, that there is no character which a low-minded man so much mistrusts as that of a gentleman.

I knew once a gentleman and very worthy practitioner in Vanity Fair, who used to do little wrongs to his neighbours on purpose, and in order to apologise for them in an open and manly way afterwards—and

Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt: how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds.

What humiliation and fury: what pangs of sickening rage, balked ambition and love; what wounds of outraged vanity, tenderness even, had this old worldling now to suffer under!

"I don't care for a little poverty; and I think, without vanity, I've talents enough to make my own way."

The last scene of her dismal Vanity Fair comedy was fast approaching;

here was the lot of our poor little creature and harmless lost wanderer in the great struggling crowds of Vanity Fair.

before a woman's pride and vanity will let her own to such a confession.

These, brother, are secrets, and out of the domain of Vanity Fair, in which our story lies.

all the Vanity Fair booths were laid out with the most tempting liveliness and splendour.

a very good sport for a philosophical frequenter of Vanity Fair.

Next to conquering in war, conquering in love has been a source of pride, time out of mind, amongst men in Vanity Fair, or how should schoolboys brag of their amours, or Don Juan be popular?

Our friend George was in the full career of the pleasures of Vanity Fair.

profusion of jewellery there would be exhibited in the genteelest homes of Vanity Fair!