William Makepeace Thackeray - Pendennis (1849)

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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
Although I enter not,
Yet round about the spot
Ofttimes I hover;
And near the sacred gate
With longing eyes I wait,
Expectant of her.

William Makepeace Thackeray
For a slashing article, sir, there's nobody like the Capting.
Mr Bungay

William Makepeace Thackeray
Of the Corporation of the Goosequill — of the Press, my boy, … of the fourth estate … There she is — the great engine — she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world — her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous.

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
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!

William Makepeace Thackeray
How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!

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

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
The Pall Mall Gazette is written by gentlemen for gentlemen.

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

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
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray