William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

I will bring order from chaos and light from darkness.

I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning.

You must not judge hastily or vulgarly of Snobs: to do so shows that you are yourself a Snob.

At certain periods of life, we live years of emotion in a few weeks, and look back on those times as on great gaps between the old life and the new.

Who does not believe his first passion eternal?

The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward.

Women like not only to conquer, but to be conquered.

It is all very well for you, who have probably never seen any spiritual manifestations, to talk as you do; but if you had seen what I have witnessed you would hold a different opinion.

Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned have a great tenderness and pity for the poor folks who are not endowed with the prodigious talents which we have.

How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy! Pendennis. Book ii. Chap. xxxi.

The great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself.

A good woman is the loveliest flower that blooms under heaven; and we look with love and wonder upon its silent grace, its pure fragrance, its delicate bloom of beauty.

Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin That never has known the barber's shear, All your wish is woman to win, This is the way that boys begin. Wait till you come to Forty Year.

[As they say in the old legends]Before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of other souls thither.

Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders.

If I mayn't tell you what I feel, what is the use of a friend?

We have only to change the point of view and the greatest action looks mean.

The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.

There is no good in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else. The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.

Pray, dear madam, another glass; it is Christmas time, it will do you no harm.

What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the bankers! How tenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative; what a kind, good-natured old creature we find her!

We love being in love, that's the truth on't.

Here is a minute. It may be my love is dead, but here is a minute to kneel over the grave and pray by it.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.

In a word, in adversity she was the best of comforters, in good fortune the most troublesome of friends...

His Scotch bear-leader, Mr Boswell, was a butt of the first quality.

It is those who injure women who get the most kindness from them.

Let the man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim. Attacking is his only secret. Dare, and the world always yields: or, if it beat you sometimes, dare again, and it will succumb.

Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.

Mark to yourself the gradual way in which you have been prepared for, and are now led by an irresistible necessity to enter upon your great labour.

let me whisper my belief, entre nous, that of those eminent philosophers who cry out against parsons the loudest, there are not many who have got their knowledge of the church by going thither often.

Mr Moss's courtyard is railed in like a cage, lest the gentlemen who are boarding with him should take a fancy to escape from his hospitality.

It is from the level of calamities ... that we learn impressive and useful lessons.

Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world always yields or if it beats you sometimes dare it again and it will succumb.

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of children.

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.