William Makepeace Thackeray - Man Quotes

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The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.

William Makepeace Thackeray
I never know whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
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?

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

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
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
Perhaps there is no greater test of a man's regularity and easiness of conscience than his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of a rat-tat! The good are eager for it; but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

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

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
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
So they pass away: friends, kindred, the dearest-loved, grown people, aged, infants. As we go on the down-hill journey, the mile-stones are grave-stones, and on each more and more names are written; unless haply you live beyond man's common age, when friends have dropped off, and, tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you reach the terminus alone.

William Makepeace Thackeray
A man is seldom more manly than when he is what you call unmanned,--the source of his emotion is championship, pity, and courage; the instinctive desire to cherish those who are innocent and unhappy, and defend those who are tender and weak.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
Under the magnetism of friendship the modest man becomes bold; the shy, confident; the lazy, active; and the impetuous, prudent and peaceful.

William Makepeace Thackeray
Whenever he met a great man he grovelled before him, and my-lorded him as only a free-born Briton can do.

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

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
Next to eating good dinners, a healthy man with a benevolent turn of mind, must like, I think, to read about them.

William Makepeace Thackeray
Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men's faces that is honored wherever presented. You cannot help trusting such men. Their very presence gives confidence. There is promise to pay in their faces which gives confidence and you prefer it to another man's endorsement. Character is credit.

William Makepeace Thackeray
Let the man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim. Attacking is his only secret. Dare, and the world always yields: or, if it beat you sometimes, dare again, and it will succumb.

William Makepeace Thackeray
Here was a man who could not spell, and did not care to read — who had the habits and the cunning of a boor: whose aim in life was pettifogging: who never had a taste, or emotion, or enjoyment, but was sordid and soil; and yet he had rank, and honors, and power, somehow: and was dignitary of the land, and a pillar of the state.

William Makepeace Thackeray
'Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard, Master Harry — every man of every nation has done that — 'tis the living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my cost.

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire hopeless passion is my destiny.

William Makepeace Thackeray