William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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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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Life is the soul's nursery.
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There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.
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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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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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I want a sofa, as I want a friend, upon which I can repose familiarly. If you can't have intimate terms and freedom with one and the other, they are of no good.
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Almost all women will give a sympathizing hearing to men who are in love. Be they ever so old, they grow young again with that conversation, and renew their own early times.
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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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Perhaps all early love affairs ought to be strangled or drowned, like so many blind kittens.
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A man is seldom more manly than when he is what you call unmanned,--the source of his emotion is championship, pity, and courage; the instinctive desire to cherish those who are innocent and unhappy, and defend those who are tender and weak.
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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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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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Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?
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Who does not believe his first passion eternal?
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Humor is the mistress of tears.
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And in those varieties of pain of which we spoke anon, what a part of confidante has that poor teapot played ever since the kindly plant was introduced among us! What myriads of women have cried over it, to be sure! What sickbeds it has smoked by! What fevered lips have received refreshment from out of it! Nature meant very gently by women when she made that teaplant; and with a little thought what a series of pictures and groups the fancy may conjure up and assemble round the teapot and cup!
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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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People hate as they love, unreasonably.
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Dare and the world always yields; or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and it will succumb.
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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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Women like not only to conquer, but to be conquered.
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If a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relative to do the business.
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What, indeed, does not that word "cheerfulness" imply? It means a contented spirit, it means a pure heart, it means a kind and loving disposition; it means humility and charity; it means a generous appreciation of others, and a modest opinion of self.
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For my part, I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses,--the very easiest to be deadened when wakened, and in some never wakened at all.