William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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To know nothing, or little, is in the nature of some husbands. To hide, in the nature of how many women? Oh, ladies! how many of you have surreptitious milliners' bills? How many of you have gowns and bracelets which you daren't show, or which you wear trembling?--trembling, and coaxing with smiles the husband by your side, who does not know the new velvet gown from the old one, or the new bracelet from last year's, or has any notion that the ragged-looking yellow lace scarf cost forty guineas and that Madame Bobinot is writing dunning letters every week for the money!
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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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People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.
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That which we call a snob by any other name would still be snobbish.
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Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders.
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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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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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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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It's a great comfort to some people to groan over their imaginary ills.
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One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object, in order, as we said, to be consistent.
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If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied.
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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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Under the magnetism of friendship the modest man becomes bold; the shy, confident; the lazy, active; and the impetuous, prudent and peaceful.
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Successful people aren't born that way. They become successful by establishing the habit of doing things unsuccessful people don't like to do. The successful people don't always like these things themselves; they just get on and do them.
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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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Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
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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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We pass by common objects or persons without noticing them; but the keen eye detects and notes types everywhere and among all classes.
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Hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be offended.
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There are other books in a man's library besides Ovid, and after dawdling ever so long at a woman's knee, one day he gets up and is free. We have all been there; we have all had the fever--the strongest and the smallest, from Samson, Hercules, Rinaldo, downward: but it burns out, and you get well.
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We should pay as much reverence to youth as we should to age; there are points in which you young folks are altogether our superiors: and I can't help constantly crying out to persons of my own years, when busied about their young people--leave them alone; don't be always meddling with their affairs, which they can manage for themselves; don't be always insisting upon managing their boats, and putting your oars in the water with theirs.
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There is no good in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else. The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.
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It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.