William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!
A woman's heart is just like a lithographer's stone; what is once written upon it cannot be rubbed out.
Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?
If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick and easy ruin is.
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.
A lady who sets her heart upon a lad in uniform must prepare to change lovers pretty quickly, or her life will be but a sad one.
She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slip-shod and in curl-papers, all day.
In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.
Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?
Happy! Who is happy? Was there not a serpent in Paradise itself? And if Eve had been perfectly happy beforehand, would she have listened to the tempter?
When Fate wills that something should come to pass, she sends forth a million of little circumstances to clear and prepare the way.
We know that Heaven chastens those whom it loves best; being pleased by repeated trials, to make . . . pure spirits more pure.
One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object, in order, as we said, to be consistent.
Then sing as Martin Luther sang, As Doctor Martin Luther sang, "Who loves not wine, woman and song, He is a fool his whole life long."
Let us be very gentle with our neighbors' failings, and forgive our friends their debts as we hope ourselves to be forgiven.
As fits the holy Christmas birth, Be this, good friends, our carol still Be peace on earth, be peace on earth, To men of gentle will.
Next to eating good dinners, a healthy man with a benevolent turn of mind, must like, I think, to read about them.
Lucky he who has been educated to bear his fate, whatsoever it may be, by an early example of uprightness, and a childish training in honor.
When a man is in love with one woman in a family, it is astonishing how fond he becomes of every person connected with it.
The world is full of love and pity, I say. Had there been less suffering, there would have been less kindness.
If dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am I lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.
Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it.
'No business before breakfast, Glum!' says the King. 'Breakfast first, business next.'
He was always thinking of his brother's soul, or of the souls of those who differed with him in opinion: it is a sort of comfort which many of the serious give themselves.
Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter.
Oh, my young friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love-business, and how undignified, sometimes, the end!
Almost all women will give a sympathizing hearing to men who are in love. Be they ever so old, they grow young again with that conversation, and renew their own early times.
An intelligent wife can make her home, in spite of exigencies, pretty much what she pleases.
What will a man not do when frantic with love? To what baseness will he not demean himself? What pangs will he not make others suffer, so that he may ease his selfish heart?
Perhaps all early love affairs ought to be strangled or drowned, like so many blind kittens.
it is the ordinary lot of people to have no friends if they themselves care for nobody
Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them-almost all women; a vast number of clever, hardheaded men.
I have seen no men in life loving their profession so much as painters, except, perhaps, actors, who, when not engaged themselves, always go to the play.
The little cares, fears, tears, timid misgivings, sleepless fancies of I don't know how many days and nights, were forgotten under one moment's influence of that familiar, irresistible smile.
Tis hard with respect to Beauty, that its possessor should not have a life enjoyment of it, but be compelled to resign it after, at the most, some forty years lease
A crow, who had flown away with a cheese from a dairy window, sate perched on a tree looking down at a great big frog in a pool underneath him.
What man's life is not overtaken by one or more of those tornadoes that send us out of the course, and fling us on rocks to shelter as best we may?
Oh, brother wearers of motley, are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and trembling and the jingling of cap and bells?
Tis misfortune that awakens ingenuity, or fortitude, or endurance, in hearts where these qualities had never come to life but for the circumstance which gave them a being.
If a man has committed wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his errors out to the world than his own relations.