William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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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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Oh, those women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make darlings of their ugliest thoughts.
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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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She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slip-shod and in curl-papers, all day.
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Malice is of the boomerang character, and is apt to turn upon the projector.
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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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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.
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A person can't help their birth.
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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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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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Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?
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It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.
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Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter.
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An immense percentage of snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of this mortal life.
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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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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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Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard... 'Tis the living up to it that's difficult.
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Who has not seen how women bully women? What tortures have men to endure compared to those daily repeated shafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor women are riddled by the tyrants of their sex?
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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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Why do they always put mud into coffee on board steamers? Why does the tea generally taste of boiled boots?
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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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Choose a good disagreeable friend, if you be wise--a surly, steady, economical, rigid fellow.
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If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man.
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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.