William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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A person can't help their birth.
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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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He who meanly admires a mean thing is a snob--perhaps that is a safe definition of the character.
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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 strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.
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As nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own, too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches!
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If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man.
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A fool can no more see his own folly than he can see his ears.
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Let a man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world yields, or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and you will succeed.
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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.
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That which we call a snob by any other name would still be snobbish.
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In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.
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Taste is something quite different from fashion, superior to fashion.
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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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Kindness is very indigestible. It disagrees with very proud stomachs.
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The world is good natured to people who are good natured.
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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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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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Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
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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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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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She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slip-shod and in curl-papers, all day.
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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.