"If you want carelessness you must go to the martyrs."

In the character of Major Pendennis of course Thackeray did splendidly a work which wanted doing... for it vividly presents, in the person of a not unsuitable man, the fundamental truth that the worship of this world is a superstition, and has all the limitations of a superstition. Religious people speak of worldlings as [happy] and careless; but such religious people pay the worldlings far too high a compliment. Major Pendennis was not particularly [happy] ; and he certainly was the very reverse of careless. He had to walk more cautiously and seriously than the adherent of any elaborate theology. Worldliness and the worldlings are in their nature solemn and timid. If you want carelessness you must go to the martyrs.

-Introduction to Thackeray (1909)