William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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Kindness is very indigestible. It disagrees with very proud stomachs.
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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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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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If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied.
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It's a great comfort to some people to groan over their imaginary ills.
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That which we call a snob by any other name would still be snobbish.
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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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Alas! we are the sport of destiny.
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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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It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.
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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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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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As they say in the old legends]Before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of other souls thither.
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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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Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
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So they pass away: friends, kindred, the dearest-loved, grown people, aged, infants. As we go on the down-hill journey, the mile-stones are grave-stones, and on each more and more names are written; unless haply you live beyond man's common age, when friends have dropped off, and, tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you reach the terminus alone.
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It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.
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Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
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A fool can no more see his own folly than he can see his ears.
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Taste is something quite different from fashion, superior to fashion.
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A person can't help their birth.
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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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If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man.