William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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Follow your honest convictions and be strong.
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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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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 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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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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An intelligent wife can make her home, in spite of exigencies, pretty much what she pleases.
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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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'No business before breakfast, Glum!' says the King. 'Breakfast first, business next.'
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it is the ordinary lot of people to have no friends if they themselves care for nobody
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Ah! gracious Heaven gives us eyes to see our own wrong, however dim age may make them; and knees not too stiff to kneel, in spite of years, cramp, and rheumatism.
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No particular motive for living, except the custom and habit of it.
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If a man has committed wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his errors out to the world than his own relations.
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We are most of us very lonely in this world; you who have any who love you, cling to them and thank God.
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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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Time passes, Time the consoler, Time the anodyne.
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One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own.
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Every man ought to be in love a few times in his life, and to have a smart attack of the fever. You are better for it when it is over: the better for your misfortune, if you endure it with a manly heart; how much the better for success, if you win it and a good wife into the bargain!
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Love makes fools of us all, big and little.
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Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and planted it, so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing, but it may spread into a prodigious timber.
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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.
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A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible.
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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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All is vanity, nothing is fair.
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When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.