William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy! Pendennis. Book ii. Chap. xxxi.
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Life without laughing is a dreary blank.
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Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt; how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds.
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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.
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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.
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Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter.
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Those we love can but walk down to the pier with us - the voyage we must make alone.
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A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry whom she likes. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did.
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Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?-Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
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A woman's heart is just like a lithographer's stone; what is once written upon it cannot be rubbed out.
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Malice is of the boomerang character, and is apt to turn upon the projector.
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An immense percentage of snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of this mortal life.
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Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish. Alas, the heart hardens as the blood ceases to run. The cold snow strikes down from the head, and checks the glow of feeling. Who wants to survive into old age after abdicating all his faculties one by one, and be sans teeth, sans eyes, sans memory, sans hope, sans sympathy?
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When a man is in love with one woman in a family, it is astonishing how fond he becomes of every person connected with it.
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To be thought rich is as good as to be rich.
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Who was the blundering idiot who said 'fine words butter no parsnips'? Half the parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no other sauce.
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What woman, however old, has not the bridal-favours and raiment stowed away, and packed in lavender, in the inmost cupboards of her heart?
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We can't all be lions in this world. There must be some lambs, harmless, kindly, gregarious creatures for eating and shearing.
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A cheerful look brings joy to the heart.
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You can't order remembrance out of the mind; and a wrong that was a wrong yesterday must be a wrong to-morrow.
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It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.
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I never was much of an oyster eater, nor can I relish them 'in naturalibus' as some do, but require a quantity of sauces, lemons, cayenne peppers, bread and butter, and so forth, to render them palatable.
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Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.
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'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.