William Makepeace Thackeray Quotations

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

When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole.

Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.

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

It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

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!

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

A good laugh is sunshine in the house.

An evil person is like a dirty window, they never let the light shine through.

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.

It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.

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.

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.

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

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

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.

I would rather make my name than inherit it.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

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

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

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

What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.

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

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

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

Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We should pay as much reverence to youth as we should to age; there are points in which you young folks are altogether our superiors: and I can't help constantly crying out to persons of my own years, when busied about their young people--leave them alone; don't be always meddling with their affairs, which they can manage for themselves; don't be always insisting upon managing their boats, and putting your oars in the water with theirs.

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

Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.

A cheerful look brings joy to the heart.

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

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?

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!.

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

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

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

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

If a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relative to do the business.

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

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.

People hate as they love, unreasonably.

Follow your honest convictions and be strong.

...the greatest tyrants over women are women.

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.

Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.

Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?-Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.

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

Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.

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

All is vanity, nothing is fair.

Presently, we were aware of an odour gradually coming towards us, something musky, fiery, savoury, mysterious, - a hot drowsy smell, that lulls the senses, and yet enflames them, - the truffles were coming.

There is a skeleton in every house.

You read the past in some old faces.

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

Cheerfulness means a contented spirit, a pure heart, a kind and loving disposition; it means humility and ~ charity, a generous appreciation of others, and a modest opinion of self.

Only to two or three persons in all the world are the reminiscences of a man's early youth interesting: to the parent who nursed him; to the fond wife or child mayhap afterwards who loves him; to himself always and supremely--whatever may be his actual prosperity or ill fortune, his present age, illness, difficulties, renown, or disappointments--the dawn of his life still shines brightly for him, the early griefs and delights and attachments remain with him ever faithful and dear.

There is a certain sort of man whose doom in the world is disappointment, who excels in it, and whose luckless triumphs in his meek career of life, I have often thought, must be regarded by the kind eyes above with as much favor as the splendid successes and achievements of coarser and more prosperous men.

If you take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better than his neighbor?

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.

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.

What is a gentleman? It is to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise; and possessed of all these qualities to exercise them in the most graceful manner.

How do men feel whose whole lives (and many men's lives are) are lies, schemes, and subterfuges? What sort of company do they keep when they are alone? Daily in life I watch men whose every smile is an artifice, and every wink is an hypocrisy. Doth such a fellow where a mask in his own privacy, and to his own conscience?

Forgotten tones of love recur to us, and kind glances shine out of the past--oh so bright and clear!--oh so longed after!--because they are out of reach; as holiday music from within a prison wall--or sunshine seen through the bars; more prized because unattainable--more bright because of the contrast of present darkness and solitude, whence there is no escape.

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.

Fairy roses, fairy rings, turn out sometimes troublesome things.

Oh, my young friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love-business, and how undignified, sometimes, the end!

The best of women are hypocrites.

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

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.

If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men's failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal's natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle?

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

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

You must not judge hastily or vulgarly of Snobs: to do so shows that you are yourself a Snob.

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.

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

Certain it is that scandal is good brisk talk, whereas praise of one's neighbor is by no means lively hearing. An acquaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and served with mustard and cayenne pepper excites the appetite; whereas a slice of cold friend with currant jelly is but a sickly, unrelishing meat.

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.

Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them-almost all women; a vast number of clever, hardheaded men.

It is comparatively easy to leave a mistress, but very hard to be left by one.

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

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.

All amusements to which virtuous women are not admitted, are, rely upon it, deleterious in their nature.

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

You, who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your calling, are a snob; as are you who boast of your wealth.

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

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.

Our measure of rewards and punishments is most partial and incomplete, absurdly inadequate, utterly worldly; and we wish to continue it into the next world. Into that next and awful world we strive to pursue men, and send after them our impotent paltry verdicts of condemnation or acquittal. We set up our paltry little rod to measure heaven immeasurable.

Almost all women have hearts full of pity.

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.

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?

True love is better than glory.

If fun is good, truth is still better, and love best of all.

The thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair.

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