William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
-
It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.
-
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.
-
Pray, dear madam, another glass; it is Christmas time, it will do you no harm.
-
We can't all be lions in this world. There must be some lambs, harmless, kindly, gregarious creatures for eating and shearing.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Charming Alnaschar visions! it is the happy privilege of youth to construct you.
-
Pray God, keep us simple.
-
He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob.
-
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.
-
You can't order remembrance out of the mind; and a wrong that was a wrong yesterday must be a wrong to-morrow.
-
Tis misfortune that awakens ingenuity, or fortitude, or endurance, in hearts where these qualities had never come to life but for the circumstance which gave them a being.
-
Those who forgets their friends to follow those of a higher status are truly snobs.
-
A snob is that man or woman who is always pretending to be something better--especially richer or more fashionable--than he is.
-
It is from the level of calamities, not that of every-day life, that we learn impressive and useful lessons.
-
People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.
-
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
-
If love lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of spirit burns brightly; and, if we die, deplores us for ever, and loves still equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the faithful bosom--whence it passes with the pure soul, beyond death; surely it shall be immortal!
-
Choose a good disagreeable friend, if you be wise--a surly, steady, economical, rigid fellow.
-
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.
-
Love seems to survive life, and to reach beyond it. I think we take it with us past the grave. Do we not still give it to those who have left us? May we not hope that they feel it for us, and that we shall leave it here in one or two fond bosoms, when we also are gone?
-
'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.
-
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!
-
The ladies--Heaven bless them!--are, as a general rule, coquettes from babyhood upwards.