William Makepeace Thackeray - Love Quotes

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It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't: and are proud of our impotence, too.

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
When a man is in love with one woman in a family, it is astonishing how fond he becomes of every person connected with it.

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
Almost all women will give a sympathizing hearing to men who are in love. Be they ever so old, they grow young again with that conversation, and renew their own early times.

William Makepeace Thackeray
If dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am I lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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?

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
Happiest time of youth and life, when love is first spoken and returned; when the dearest eyes are daily shining welcome, and the fondest lips never tire of whispering their sweet secrets; when the parting look that accompanies "Good night!" gives delightful warning of tomorrow.

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
As the gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best.

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
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
The world is full of love and pity, I say. Had there been less suffering, there would have been less kindness.

William Makepeace Thackeray
Those we love can but walk down to the pier with us - the voyage we must make alone.

William Makepeace Thackeray
Perhaps all early love affairs ought to be strangled or drowned, like so many blind kittens.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
A good woman is the loveliest flower that blooms under heaven; and we look with love and wonder upon its silent grace, its pure fragrance, its delicate bloom of beauty.

William Makepeace Thackeray
He had placed himself at her feet so long that the poor little woman had been accustomed to trample upon him. She didn't wish to marry him, but she wished to keep him. She wished to give him nothing, but that he should give her all. It is a bargain not infrequently levied in love.

William Makepeace Thackeray