William makepeace thackeray quotes

Ah me! we wound where we never intended to strike; we create anger where we never meant harm; and these thoughts are the thorns in our cushion. - William Makepeace Thackeray

Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?

Hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be offended.

To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted my no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forgo even ambition when the end is gained - who can say this is not greatness?

'No business before breakfast, Glum!' says the King. 'Breakfast first, business next.'

Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you.

Money has only a different value in the eyes of each.

It was in the reign of George II. that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled ; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

There is a skeleton in every house.

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.

Let us be very gentle with our neighbors' failings, and forgive our friends their debts as we hope ourselves to be forgiven.

Those who forgets their friends to follow those of a higher status are truly snobs.

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!

Pray God, keep us simple.

An immense percentage of snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of this mortal life.

Let a man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world yields, or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and you will succeed.

Oh, Vanity of vanities! How wayward the decrees of Fate are; How very weak the very wise, How very small the very great are!

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.

A person can't help their birth.

Dare and the world always yields; or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and it will succumb.

A snob is that man or woman who is always pretending to be something better--especially richer or more fashionable--than he is.

Women are jealous of cigars... they regard them as a strong rival.

You read the past in some old faces.

Remember, it's as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.

If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!

The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

He who meanly admires a mean thing is a snob--perhaps that is a safe definition of the character.

A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible.

No particular motive for living, except the custom and habit of it.

Almost all women have hearts full of pity.

To be beautiful is enough! if a woman can do that well who should demand more from her? You don't want a rose to sing.

A good laugh is sunshine in the house.

Time passes, Time the consoler, Time the anodyne.

All is vanity, nothing is fair.

The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.

What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables.

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.

If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied.

Bad husbands will make bad wives.

When [men] see a pretty woman, and feel the delicious madness of love coming over them, they always stop to calculate her temper, her money, their own money, or suitableness for the married life.... Ha, ha, ha! Let us fool in this way no more. I have been in love forty-three times with all ranks and conditions of women, and would have married every time if they would have let me. How many wives had King Solomon, the wisest of men? And is not that story a warning to us that Love is master of the wisest? It is only fools who defy him.

We know that Heaven chastens those whom it loves best; being pleased by repeated trials, to make . . . pure spirits more pure.

Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.

Then sing as Martin Luther sang, As Doctor Martin Luther sang, "Who loves not wine, woman and song, He is a fool his whole life long."

Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?

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.

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.

Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.

It's a great comfort to some people to groan over their imaginary ills.

Malice is of the boomerang character, and is apt to turn upon the projector.

Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.

Benevolence and feeling ennoble the most trifling actions.

Humor is wit and love.

Vanity is often the unseen spur.

As an occupation in declining years, I declare I think saving is useful, amusing and not unbecoming. It must be a perpetual amusement. It is a game that can be played by day, by night, at home and abroad, and at which you must win in the long run. . . . What an interest it imparts to life!.

I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses.

Learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly.

You can't order remembrance out of the mind; and a wrong that was a wrong yesterday must be a wrong to-morrow.

Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?

To forego even ambition when the end is gained - who can say this is not greatness?

There is no man that can teach us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison.

Next to eating good dinners, a healthy man with a benevolent turn of mind, must like, I think, to read about them.

Kindness is very indigestible. It disagrees with very proud stomachs.

The world is good natured to people who are good natured.

Those who are gone, you have. Those who departed loving you, love you still; and you love them always. They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true; they are only gone into the next room; and you will presently get up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you will be no more seen.

The best of women are hypocrites.

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.

We love being in love, that's the truth on't. If we had not met Joan, we should have met Kate, and adored her. We know our mistresses are no better than many other women, nor no prettier, nor no wiser, nor no wittier. 'Tis not for these reasons we love a woman, or for any special quality or charm I know of; we might as well demand that a lady should be the tallest woman in the world, like the Shropshire giantess, as that she should be a paragon in any other character, before we began to love her.

Love makes fools of us all, big and little.

We pass by common objects or persons without noticing them; but the keen eye detects and notes types everywhere and among all classes.

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?

Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.

If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man.

All is vanity, look you; and so the preacher is vanity too.

Life is soul's nursery- its training place for the destinies of eternity.

Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.

To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.

A gentleman, is a rarer thing than some of us think for. Which of us can point out many such in his circle--men whose aims are generous, whose truth is constant and elevated; who can look the world honestly in the face, with an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small? We all know a hundred whose coats are well made, and a score who have excellent manners; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little scrap of paper, and each make out his list.

Never marry with the expectation of changing a person.

Though small was your allowance, You saved a little store: And those who save a little, Shall get a plenty more.

Frequent the company of your betters.

Under the magnetism of friendship the modest man becomes bold; the shy, confident; the lazy, active; and the impetuous, prudent and peaceful.

Choose a good disagreeable friend, if you be wise--a surly, steady, economical, rigid fellow.

What a charming reconciler and peacemaker money is!

Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.

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.

Who feels injustice, who shrinks before a slight, who has a sense of wrong so acute, and so glowing a gratitude for kindness, as a generous boy?

Is beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so?

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.

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.

A lady who sets her heart upon a lad in uniform must prepare to change lovers pretty quickly, or her life will be but a sad one.

Young ladies may have been crossed in love, and have had their sufferings, their frantic moments of grief and tears, their wakeful nights, and so forth; but it is only in very sentimental novels that people occupy themselves perpetually with that passion, and I believe what are called broken hearts are a very rare article indeed.

Except for the young or very happy, I can't say I am sorry for anyone who dies.

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.

Who has not seen how women bully women? What tortures have men to endure compared to those daily repeated shafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor women are riddled by the tyrants of their sex?

One of the greatest of a great man's qualities is success; 't is the result of all the others; 't is a latent power in him which compels the favor of the gods, and subjugates fortune.

I set it down as a maxim, that it is good for a man to live where he can meet his betters, intellectual and social.

One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object, in order, as we said, to be consistent.

Follow your honest convictions and be strong.

Business first; pleasure afterwards.

People hate as they love, unreasonably.

We can't all be lions in this world. There must be some lambs, harmless, kindly, gregarious creatures for eating and shearing.

The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.

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.

A fool can no more see his own folly than he can see his ears.

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?

We who have lived before railways were made belong to another world. It was only yesterday, but what a gulf between now and then! Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth -- all these belong to the old period. But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark.

When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.

It is a friendly heart that has plenty of friends.

When Fate wills that something should come to pass, she sends forth a million of little circumstances to clear and prepare the way.

To be thought rich is as good as to be rich.

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.

'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.

A cheerful look brings joy to the heart.

When I say that I know women, I mean I know that I don't know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as, I have no doubt, she is to herself.

...the greatest tyrants over women are women.

A woman's heart is just like a lithographer's stone; what is once written upon it cannot be rubbed out.

if you are not allowed to touch the heart sometimes in spite of syntax, and are not to be loved until you all know the difference between trimeter and trameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every schoolmaster perish miserably!

Sure, love vincit omnia; is immeasurably above all ambition, more precious than wealth, more noble than name. He knows not life who knows not that: he hath not felt the highest faculty of the soul who hath not enjoyed it.

Who was the blundering idiot who said 'fine words butter no parsnips'? Half the parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no other sauce.

Life without laughing is a dreary blank.

It is from the level of calamities, not that of every-day life, that we learn impressive and useful lessons.

Love seems to survive life, and to reach beyond it. I think we take it with us past the grave. Do we not still give it to those who have left us? May we not hope that they feel it for us, and that we shall leave it here in one or two fond bosoms, when we also are gone?