William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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Next to eating good dinners, a healthy man with a benevolent turn of mind, must like, I think, to read about them.
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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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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.
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Those who are gone, you have. Those who departed loving you, love you still; and you love them always. They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true; they are only gone into the next room; and you will presently get up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you will be no more seen.
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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!
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Charming Alnaschar visions! it is the happy privilege of youth to construct you.
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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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It is from the level of calamities, not that of every-day life, that we learn impressive and useful lessons.
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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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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?
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Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?
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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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He who meanly admires a mean thing is a snob--perhaps that is a safe definition of the character.
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Bravery never goes out of fashion.
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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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He was always thinking of his brother's soul, or of the souls of those who differed with him in opinion: it is a sort of comfort which many of the serious give themselves.
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Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.
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Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.
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Humor is wit and love.
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Why do they always put mud into coffee on board steamers? Why does the tea generally taste of boiled boots?
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A person can't help their birth.
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'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.
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If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied.