William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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Charming Alnaschar visions! it is the happy privilege of youth to construct you.
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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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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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Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it.
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The play is done; the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter's bell A moment yet the actor stops And looks around to say farewell.
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Taste is something quite different from fashion, superior to fashion.
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If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied.
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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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Choose a good disagreeable friend, if you be wise--a surly, steady, economical, rigid fellow.
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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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We who have lived before railways were made belong to another world. It was only yesterday, but what a gulf between now and then! Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth -- all these belong to the old period. But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark.
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Who was the blundering idiot who said 'fine words butter no parsnips'? Half the parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no other sauce.
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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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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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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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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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Bad husbands will make bad wives.
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Then sing as Martin Luther sang, As Doctor Martin Luther sang, "Who loves not wine, woman and song, He is a fool his whole life long."
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The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire.
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A fool can no more see his own folly than he can see his ears.
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A gentleman, is a rarer thing than some of us think for. Which of us can point out many such in his circle--men whose aims are generous, whose truth is constant and elevated; who can look the world honestly in the face, with an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small? We all know a hundred whose coats are well made, and a score who have excellent manners; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little scrap of paper, and each make out his list.
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Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, 'To-morrow, success or failure won't matter much; and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.'
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Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.
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What man's life is not overtaken by one or more of those tornadoes that send us out of the course, and fling us on rocks to shelter as best we may?