William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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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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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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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.
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The world is full of love and pity, I say. Had there been less suffering, there would have been less kindness.
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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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It is comparatively easy to leave a mistress, but very hard to be left by one.
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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 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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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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At that comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain we had a bouillabaisse than which a better was never eaten at Marseilles; and not the least headache in the morning, I give you my word; on the contrary, you only wake with a sweet refreshing thirst for claret and water.
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It seems to me one cannot sit down in that place [the Round Reading room of the British Museum] without a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table, and to have thanked Heaven for my English birthright, freely to partake of these beautiful books, and speak the truth I find there.
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Humor is wit and love.
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Choose a good disagreeable friend, if you be wise--a surly, steady, economical, rigid fellow.
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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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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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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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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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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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She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slip-shod and in curl-papers, all day.
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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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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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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.