William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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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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In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.
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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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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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A fool can no more see his own folly than he can see his ears.
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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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Why do they always put mud into coffee on board steamers? Why does the tea generally taste of boiled boots?
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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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Learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly.
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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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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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The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.
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Diffidence is a sort of false modesty.
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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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It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.
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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 an occupation in declining years, I declare I think saving is useful, amusing and not unbecoming. It must be a perpetual amusement. It is a game that can be played by day, by night, at home and abroad, and at which you must win in the long run. . . . What an interest it imparts to life!.
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It is all very well for you, who have probably never seen any spiritual manifestations, to talk as you do; but if you had seen what I have witnessed you would hold a different opinion.
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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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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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That which we call a snob by any other name would still be snobbish.
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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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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.