William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from William Makepeace Thackeray on Wise Famous Quotes.
Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders.
Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?
Lower himself!" says the lady, with a toss of her head. "No man lowers himself by pursuing an honest calling. No man!
I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because it is transitory, dislikes roast beef?
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.
If you had told Sycorax that her son Caliban was as handsome as Apollo, she would have been pleased, witch as she was.
Hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be offended.
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?
A gentleman sitting in spectacles before an old ledger, and writing down pitiful remembrances of his own condition, is a quaint and ridiculous object.
Let us be very gentle with our neighbors' failings, and forgive our friends their debts as we hope ourselves to be forgiven.
You can't order remembrance out of the mind; and a wrong that was a wrong yesterday must be a wrong to-morrow.
What man's life is not overtaken by one or more of those tornadoes that send us out of the course, and fling us on rocks to shelter as best we may?
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.
What woman, however old, has not the bridal-favours and raiment stowed away, and packed in lavender, in the inmost cupboards of her heart?
The tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, it is a meanness to calculate the difference.
The affection of young ladies is of as rapid growth as Jack's beanstalk, and reaches up to the sky in a night.
A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible.
Women only know how to wound so. There is a poison on the tips of their little shafts, which stings a thousand times more than a man's blunter weapon.
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."
The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is forever in a passion.
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.
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.
There is no good in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else. The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.
At certain periods of life, we live years of emotion in a few weeks, and look back on those times as on great gaps between the old life and the new.
All amusements to which virtuous women are not admitted, are, rely upon it, deleterious in their nature.
The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.
Mr Moss's courtyard is railed in like a cage, lest the gentlemen who are boarding with him should take a fancy to escape from his hospitality.
The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire.
In a word, in adversity she was the best of comforters, in good fortune the most troublesome of friends ...
You, who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your calling, are a snob; as are you who boast of your wealth.
Oh, brother wearers of motley, are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and trembling and the jingling of cap and bells?
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.
The world is full of love and pity, I say. Had there been less suffering, there would have been less kindness.
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.
There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.
Oh, my young friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love-business, and how undignified, sometimes, the end!
Next to eating good dinners, a healthy man with a benevolent turn of mind, must like, I think, to read about them.