William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

194 Sourced Quotes

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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
It seems to me one cannot sit down in that place [the Round Reading room of the British Museum] without a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table, and to have thanked Heaven for my English birthright, freely to partake of these beautiful books, and speak the truth I find there.

William Makepeace Thackeray
I never was much of an oyster eater, nor can I relish them 'in naturalibus' as some do, but require a quantity of sauces, lemons, cayenne peppers, bread and butter, and so forth, to render them palatable.

William Makepeace Thackeray
For my part, I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses,--the very easiest to be deadened when wakened, and in some never wakened at all.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
And lo! in a flash of crimson splendour, with blazing scarlet clouds running before his chariot, and heralding his majestic approach, God's sun rises upon the world...

William Makepeace Thackeray
The great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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!.

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
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?

William Makepeace Thackeray
As nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own, too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches!

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned have a great tenderness and pity for the poor folks who are not endowed with the prodigious talents which we have.

William Makepeace Thackeray
What will a man not do when frantic with love? To what baseness will he not demean himself? What pangs will he not make others suffer, so that he may ease his selfish heart?

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
Fairy roses, fairy rings, turn out sometimes troublesome things.

William Makepeace Thackeray
If love lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of spirit burns brightly; and, if we die, deplores us for ever, and loves still equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the faithful bosom--whence it passes with the pure soul, beyond death; surely it shall be immortal!

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

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

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

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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!

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
There are other books in a man's library besides Ovid, and after dawdling ever so long at a woman's knee, one day he gets up and is free. We have all been there; we have all had the fever--the strongest and the smallest, from Samson, Hercules, Rinaldo, downward: but it burns out, and you get well.

William Makepeace Thackeray