William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES.
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If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick and easy ruin is.
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It is comparatively easy to leave a mistress, but very hard to be left by one.
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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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Who does not believe his first passion eternal?
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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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How grateful are we--how touched a frank and generous heart is for a kind word extended to us in our pain! The pressure of a tender hand nerves a man for an operation, and cheers him for the dreadful interview with the surgeon.
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If I mayn't tell you what I feel, what is the use of a friend?
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Perhaps all early love affairs ought to be strangled or drowned, like so many blind kittens.
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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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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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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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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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Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?
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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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Lucky he who has been educated to bear his fate, whatsoever it may be, by an early example of uprightness, and a childish training in honor.
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Life is the soul's nursery.
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Be it remembered that man subsists upon the air more than upon his meat and drink; but no one can exist for an hour without a copious supply of air. The atmosphere which some breathe is contaminated and adulterated, and with its vital principles so diminished that it cannot fully decarbonize the blood, nor fully excite the nervous system.
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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.
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Humor is the mistress of tears.
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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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There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.
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There is no man that can teach us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison.
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I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses.