A quick post before bed, to share the love of my current literary paramour, William Makepeace Thackeray:

And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don’t know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did.*

Thackeray not only re-defined the notion of snobbery to the variety that is known today, but provides a superbly brutal, yet infinitely witty social commentary.

Like Tolstoy, his observances are timeless, proving that times may change, but people rarely do.

(On a darker note, I pondered the same last week while reading up on the Circassian Massacre by the Russians in the late 19th century – love has not changed, nor has the cruelty of humankind).

*Vanity Fair, 1847. p. 26.