“The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.”
Vol. I, ch. 2.
Vanity Fair (1847–1848)
Context: The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.
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William Makepeace Thackeray 69
novelist 1811–1863Related quotes

“Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.”

Foreword to booklet on interracial relations prepared by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, as quoted in The New York Times (22 June 1964)

“It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry.”
Epigraph
The Inspector General (1836)

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
"Psychological Observations"
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Studies in Pessimism
Variant: Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.
Source: Studies in Pessimism: The Essays

Erving Goffman (1967: 10), as cited in: Trevino (2003,, p. 37).
1950s-1960s

Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics

Iraq? They just need to think it through (2007)
Context: What happened was, 2,400 years ago, the Greek Gang of Three, by whom I mean Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, started to think based on analysis, judgment and knowledge. At the same time, church people, who ran the schools and universities, wanted logic to prove the heretics wrong. As a result, design and perceptual thinking was never developed. People assumed philosophers were doing it and so they blocked anyone else from doing it. But philosophers were not. Philosophers may look out at the world from a stained-glass window, but after a while they stop looking at the world and start looking at the stained glass.