William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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One of the greatest of a great man's qualities is success; 't is the result of all the others; 't is a latent power in him which compels the favor of the gods, and subjugates fortune.
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So, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise.
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If you take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better than his neighbor?
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Never marry with the expectation of changing a person.
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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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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.
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Certain it is that scandal is good brisk talk, whereas praise of one's neighbor is by no means lively hearing. An acquaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and served with mustard and cayenne pepper excites the appetite; whereas a slice of cold friend with currant jelly is but a sickly, unrelishing meat.
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Sure, occasion is the father of most that is good in us.
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As if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than the man who blacks my boots.
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Business first; pleasure afterwards.
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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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And in those varieties of pain of which we spoke anon, what a part of confidante has that poor teapot played ever since the kindly plant was introduced among us! What myriads of women have cried over it, to be sure! What sickbeds it has smoked by! What fevered lips have received refreshment from out of it! Nature meant very gently by women when she made that teaplant; and with a little thought what a series of pictures and groups the fancy may conjure up and assemble round the teapot and cup!
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If fun is good, truth is still better, and love best of all.
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Remember, it's as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.
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Almost all women have hearts full of pity.
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Werther had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter.
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What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.
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When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole.
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True love is better than glory.
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To describe love – making is immoral and immodest; you know it is. To describe it as it really is, or would appear to you and me as lookers – on, would be to describe the most dreary farce, to chronicle the most tautological twaddle. To take note of sighs, hand – squeezes, looks at the moon, and so forth – does this business become our dignity as historians? Come away from those foolish young people – they don't want us; and dreary as their farce is, and tautological as their twaddle, you may be sure it amuses them, and that they are happy enough without us.
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Money has only a different value in the eyes of each.
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To be rich, to be famous? do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under ground, along with the idle titles engraven on your coffin? But only true love lives after you, follows your memory with secret blessings or pervades you, and intercedes for you. Non omnis moriar, if, dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am lost and hopeless, living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.
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People hate as they love, unreasonably.