William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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It is comparatively easy to leave a mistress, but very hard to be left by one.
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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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Bad husbands will make bad wives.
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Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them-almost all women; a vast number of clever, hardheaded men.
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Tis hard with respect to Beauty, that its possessor should not have a life enjoyment of it, but be compelled to resign it after, at the most, some forty years lease
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When a mother, as fond mothers will; vows that she knows every thought in her daughter's heart, I think she pretends to know a great deal too much.
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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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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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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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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?
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Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?
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Young ladies may have been crossed in love, and have had their sufferings, their frantic moments of grief and tears, their wakeful nights, and so forth; but it is only in very sentimental novels that people occupy themselves perpetually with that passion, and I believe what are called broken hearts are a very rare article indeed.
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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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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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There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.
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A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES.
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Oh, my young friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love – business, and how undignified, sometimes, the end!
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The world is good natured to people who are good natured.
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I have long gone about with a conviction on my mind that I had a work to do-a Work, if you like, with a great W; a Purpose to fulfil; ... a Great Social Evil to Discover and to Remedy.
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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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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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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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The great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself.
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Life is the soul's nursery.