William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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Let us be very gentle with our neighbors' failings, and forgive our friends their debts as we hope ourselves to be forgiven.
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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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If I mayn't tell you what I feel, what is the use of a friend?
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The great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself.
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The great moments of life are but moments like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes; a mere pressure of the hand, may decide it; or of the lip,s though they cannot speak.
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If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick and easy ruin is.
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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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That acknowledgment of weakness which we make in imploring to be relieved from hunger and from temptation is surely wisely put in our daily prayer. Think of it, you who are rich, and take heed how you turn a beggar away.
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A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES.
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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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It is an awful thing to get a glimpse, as one sometimes does, when the time is past, of some little, little wheel which works the whole mighty machinery of fate, and see how our destinies turn on a minute's delay or advance.
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Life is the soul's nursery.
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No particular motive for living, except the custom and habit of it.
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The best of women are hypocrites.
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When Fate wills that something should come to pass, she sends forth a million of little circumstances to clear and prepare the way.
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If fathers are sometimes sulky at the appearance of the destined son-in-law, is it not a fact that mothers become sentimental and, as it were, love their own loves over again.
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...the greatest tyrants over women are women.
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He that has ears to hear, let him stuff them with cotton.
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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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The Pall Mall Gazette is written by gentlemen for gentlemen.
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Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?
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For his part, every beauty of art or nature made him thankful as well as happy, and that the pleasure to be had in listening to fine music, as in looking at the stars in the sky, or at a beautiful landscape or picture, was a benefit for which we might thank Heaven as sincerely as for any other worldly blessing.
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I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses.
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Our great thoughts, our great affections, the truths of our life, never leave us. Surely they can not separate from our consciousness, shall follow it whithersoever that shall go, and are of their nature divine and immortal.