William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
-
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.
-
Sir, Respect Your Dinner: idolize it, enjoy it properly. You will be many hours in the week, many weeks in the year, and many years in your life happier if you do.
-
Our great thoughts, our great affections, the truths of our life, never leave us. Surely they can not separate from our consciousness, shall follow it whithersoever that shall go, and are of their nature divine and immortal.
-
He first selected the smallest one...and then bowed his head as though he were saying grace. Opening his mouth very wide, he struggled for a moment, after which all was over. I shall never forget the comic look of despair he cast upon the other five over-occupied shells. I asked him how he felt. 'Profoundly grateful,' he said, 'as if I had swallowed a small baby.'
-
When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.
-
There is a certain sort of man whose doom in the world is disappointment, who excels in it, and whose luckless triumphs in his meek career of life, I have often thought, must be regarded by the kind eyes above with as much favor as the splendid successes and achievements of coarser and more prosperous men.
-
She lived in her past life — every letter seemed to recall some circumstance of it. How well she remembered them all! His looks and tones, his dress, what he said and how — these relics and remembrances of dead affection were all that were left her in the world.
-
Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men's faces that is honored wherever presented. You cannot help trusting such men. Their very presence gives confidence. There is promise to pay in their faces which gives confidence and you prefer it to another man's endorsement. Character is credit.
-
In effective womanly beauty form is more than face, and manner more than either.
-
Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and planted it, so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing, but it may spread into a prodigious timber.
-
All is vanity, nothing is fair.
-
If fathers are sometimes sulky at the appearance of the destined son-in-law, is it not a fact that mothers become sentimental and, as it were, love their own loves over again.
-
Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
-
Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.
-
It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.
-
Where is truth, forsooth, and who knoweth it? Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so? Does Venus squint? Has she got a splay-foot, red hair, and a crooked back? Anoint my eyes, good Fairy Puck, so that I may ever consider the Beloved Object a paragon! Above all, keep on anointing my mistress's dainty peepers with the very strongest ointment, so that my noddle may ever appear lovely to her, and that she may continue to crown my honest ears with fresh roses!
-
What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise, and, possessing all these qualities, to exercise them in the most graceful outward manner? Ought a gentleman to be a loyal son, a true husband, an honest father? Ought his life to be decent, his bills to be paid, his taste to be high and elegant, his aims in life lofty and noble?
-
You must not judge hastily or vulgarly of Snobs: to do so shows that you are yourself a Snob.
-
If fun is good, truth is still better, and love best of all.
-
Who has not remarked the readiness with which the closest of friends and honestest of men suspect and accuse each other of cheating when they fall out on money matters? Everybody does it. Everybody is right, I suppose, and the world is a rogue.
-
To be beautiful is enough! if a woman can do that well who should demand more from her? You don't want a rose to sing.
-
True love is better than glory.
-
If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
-
You read the past in some old faces.