It is better to love wisely, no doubt: but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all - William Makepeace Thackeray

But my kind reader will please to remember that this history has “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.

I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because it is transitory, dislikes roast beef?

No, you are not worthy of the love which I have devoted to you. I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning; that I was a fool, with fond fancies, too, bartering away my all of truth and ardour against your little feeble remnant of love. I will bargain no more: I withdraw.