William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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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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Ah me! we wound where we never intended to strike; we create anger where we never meant harm; and these thoughts are the thorns in our cushion. - William Makepeace Thackeray
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Pray God, keep us simple.
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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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Malice is of the boomerang character, and is apt to turn upon the projector.
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It is all very well for you, who have probably never seen any spiritual manifestations, to talk as you do; but if you had seen what I have witnessed you would hold a different opinion.
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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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The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.
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I wonder is it because men are cowards in heart that they admire bravery so much, and place military valor so far beyond every other quality for reward and worship.
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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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Diffidence is a sort of false modesty.
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Pray, dear madam, another glass; it is Christmas time, it will do you no harm.
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It's a great comfort to some people to groan over their imaginary ills.
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To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted my no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forgo even ambition when the end is gained - who can say this is not greatness?
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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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A snob is that man or woman who is always pretending to be something better--especially richer or more fashionable--than he is.
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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 mean things is a Snob.
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At certain periods of life, we live years of emotion in a few weeks, and look back on those times as on great gaps between the old life and the new.
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People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.
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It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.
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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 from the level of calamities, not that of every-day life, that we learn impressive and useful lessons.
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This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is - A sort of soup or broth, or brew, Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, That Greenwich never could outdo; Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron, Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace; All these you eat at Terre's tavern, In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.