William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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You read the past in some old faces.
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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.
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You must not judge hastily or vulgarly of Snobs: to do so shows that you are yourself a Snob.
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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?
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Oh, brother wearers of motley, are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and trembling and the jingling of cap and bells?
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To see a young couple loving each other is no wonder; but to see an old couple loving each other is the best sight of all.
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An intelligent wife can make her home, in spite of exigencies, pretty much what she pleases.
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The affection of young ladies is of as rapid growth as Jack's beanstalk, and reaches up to the sky in a night.
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Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.
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People hate as they love, unreasonably.
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Time passes, Time the consoler, Time the anodyne.
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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.
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A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible.
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Might I give counsel to any man, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and in life, that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what great men admire.
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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.
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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.
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If fun is good, truth is still better, and love best of all.
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In effective womanly beauty form is more than face, and manner more than either.
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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.'
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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!
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Business first; pleasure afterwards.
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Frequent the company of your betters.
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'No business before breakfast, Glum!' says the King. 'Breakfast first, business next.'
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When one fib becomes due as it were, you must forge another to take up the old acceptance; and so the stock of your lies in circulation inevitably multiplies, and the danger of detection increases every day.