William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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A cheerful look brings joy to the heart.
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How grateful are we--how touched a frank and generous heart is for a kind word extended to us in our pain! The pressure of a tender hand nerves a man for an operation, and cheers him for the dreadful interview with the surgeon.
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It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.
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Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?
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The ladies--Heaven bless them!--are, as a general rule, coquettes from babyhood upwards.
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He who meanly admires a mean thing is a snob--perhaps that is a safe definition of the character.
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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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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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Forgotten tones of love recur to us, and kind glances shine out of the past – oh so bright and clear! – oh so longed after! – because they are out of reach; as holiday music from within a prison wall – or sunshine seen through the bars; more prized because unattainable – more bright because of the contrast of present darkness and solitude, whence there is no escape.
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You, who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your calling, are a snob; as are you who boast of your wealth.
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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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Those who forgets their friends to follow those of a higher status are truly snobs.
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That which we call a snob by any other name would still be snobbish.
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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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An immense percentage of snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of this mortal life.
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Alas! we are the sport of destiny.
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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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As nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own, too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches!
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I suppose as long as novels last, and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero; a wicked monster, his opposite; and a pretty girl, who finds a champion. Bravery and virtue conquer beauty; and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him, and honest folks come by their own.
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Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
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The tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, it is a meanness to calculate the difference.
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A good woman is the loveliest flower that blooms under heaven; and we look with love and wonder upon its silent grace, its pure fragrance, its delicate bloom of beauty.
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Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard... 'Tis the living up to it that's difficult.
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Which of us that is thirty years old has not had its Pompeii? Deep under ashes lies the life of youth--the careless sport, the pleasure and the passion, the darling joy.