William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
-
Only to two or three persons in all the world are the reminiscences of a man's early youth interesting: to the parent who nursed him; to the fond wife or child mayhap afterwards who loves him; to himself always and supremely--whatever may be his actual prosperity or ill fortune, his present age, illness, difficulties, renown, or disappointments--the dawn of his life still shines brightly for him, the early griefs and delights and attachments remain with him ever faithful and dear.
-
We have only to change the point of view and the greatest action looks mean.
-
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.
-
All is vanity, nothing is fair.
-
Business first; pleasure afterwards.
-
Almost all women have hearts full of pity.
-
True love is better than glory.
-
When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole.
-
As if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than the man who blacks my boots.
-
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.
-
Remember, it's as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.
-
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.
-
Sure, occasion is the father of most that is good in us.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Never marry with the expectation of changing a person.
-
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?
-
If fun is good, truth is still better, and love best of all.
-
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.
-
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!
-
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.
-
People hate as they love, unreasonably.
-
Money has only a different value in the eyes of each.