William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
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I will bring order from chaos and light from darkness.
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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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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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You read the past in some old faces.
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Is beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so?
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As fits the holy Christmas birth, Be this, good friends, our carol still Be peace on earth, be peace on earth, To men of gentle will.
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To see a young couple loving each other is no wonder; but to see an old couple loving each other is the best sight of all.
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Humor is wit and love.
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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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All is vanity, look you; and so the preacher is vanity too.
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Sir, Respect Your Dinner: idolize it, enjoy it properly. You will be many hours in the week, many weeks in the year, and many years in your life happier if you do.
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You must not judge hastily or vulgarly of Snobs: to do so shows that you are yourself a Snob.
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If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
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When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.
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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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A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair of bright eyes make pardonable? What dullness may not red lips are sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise.
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An intelligent wife can make her home, in spite of exigencies, pretty much what she pleases.
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There is no man that can teach us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison.
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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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It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.
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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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It is all very well for you, who have probably never seen any spiritual manifestations, to talk as you do; but if you had seen what I have witnessed you would hold a different opinion.
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There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.
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Who has not remarked the readiness with which the closest of friends and honestest of men suspect and accuse each other of cheating when they fall out on money matters? Everybody does it. Everybody is right, I suppose, and the world is a rogue.