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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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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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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As they say in the old legends]Before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of other souls thither.
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If I mayn't tell you what I feel, what is the use of a friend?
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Humor is the mistress of tears.
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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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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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Perhaps all early love affairs ought to be strangled or drowned, like so many blind kittens.
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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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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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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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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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There is no man that can teach us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison.
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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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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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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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I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses.
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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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Life is the soul's nursery.
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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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Dare and the world always yields; or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and it will succumb.
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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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Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men's faces that is honored wherever presented. You cannot help trusting such men. Their very presence gives confidence. There is promise to pay in their faces which gives confidence and you prefer it to another man's endorsement. Character is credit.