William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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The world is good natured to people who are good natured.
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Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you.
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There's a great power of imagination about these little creatures, and a creative fancy and belief that is very curious to watch . . . I am sure that horrid matter-of-fact child-rearers . . . do away with the child's most beautiful privilege. I am determined that Anny shall have a very extensive and instructive store of learning in Tom Thumbs, Jack-the-Giant-Killers, etc.
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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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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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Kindness is very indigestible. It disagrees with very proud stomachs.
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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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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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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 comparatively easy to leave a mistress, but very hard to be left by one.
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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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Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
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The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?
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Happy! Who is happy? Was there not a serpent in Paradise itself? And if Eve had been perfectly happy beforehand, would she have listened to the tempter?
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To be rich, to be famous? do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under ground, along with the idle titles engraven on your coffin? But only true love lives after you, follows your memory with secret blessings or pervades you, and intercedes for you. Non omnis moriar, if, dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am lost and hopeless, living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.
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All is vanity, look you; and so the preacher is vanity too.
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The tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, it is a meanness to calculate the difference.
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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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If I mayn't tell you what I feel, what is the use of a friend?
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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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Successful people aren't born that way. They become successful by establishing the habit of doing things unsuccessful people don't like to do. The successful people don't always like these things themselves; they just get on and do them.
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Bad husbands will make bad wives.
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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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As they say in the old legends]Before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of other souls thither.