William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

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?

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.

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.

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.

Next to the very young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

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.

If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick and easy ruin is.

Humor is the mistress of tears.

Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.

To be rich, to be famous? do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under ground, along with the idle titles engraven on your coffin? But only true love lives after you, follows your memory with secret blessings or pervades you, and intercedes for you. Non omnis moriar, if, dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am lost and hopeless, living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.

Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter.

[As they say in the old legends]Before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of other souls thither.

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

It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.

I have seen no men in life loving their profession so much as painters, except, perhaps, actors, who, when not engaged themselves, always go to the play.

That which we call a snob by any other name would still be snobbish.

Sure, occasion is the father of most that is good in us.

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

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!

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

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

He was always thinking of his brother's soul, or of the souls of those who differed with him in opinion: it is a sort of comfort which many of the serious give themselves.

Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it.

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

Time passes, Time the consoler, Time the anodyne.

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

The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is forever in a passion.

A crow, who had flown away with a cheese from a dairy window, sate perched on a tree looking down at a great big frog in a pool underneath him.

Could the best and kindest of us who depart from the earth have an opportunity of revisiting it, I suppose he or she (assuming that any Vanity Fair feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound) would have a pang of mortification at finding how soon our survivors were consoled.

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.

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

Life without laughing is a dreary blank.

A good laugh is sunshine in the house.

Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard... 'Tis the living up to it that's difficult.

Not only is the world informed of everything about you, but of a great deal more.

The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?

The thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair.

Which of us that is thirty years old has not had its Pompeii? Deep under ashes lies the life of youth--the careless sport, the pleasure and the passion, the darling joy.

Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin That never has known the barber's shear, All your wish is woman to win, This is the way that boys begin. Wait till you come to Forty Year.

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

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

Charming Alnaschar visions! it is the happy privilege of youth to construct you.

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.

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

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 never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

As if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than the man who blacks my boots.

I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning.