William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes - Page 4

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?

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

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

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.

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

What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables.

Time passes, Time the consoler, Time the anodyne.

We pass by common objects or persons without noticing them; but the keen eye detects and notes types everywhere and among all classes.

The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.

It is a friendly heart that has plenty of friends.

Business first; pleasure afterwards.

A lady who sets her heart upon a lad in uniform must prepare to change lovers pretty quickly, or her life will be but a sad one.

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."

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?

Vanity is often the unseen spur.

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

Ah me! we wound where we never intended to strike; we create anger where we never meant harm; and these thoughts are the thorns in our cushion. - William Makepeace Thackeray

To be beautiful is enough! if a woman can do that well who should demand more from her? You don't want a rose to sing.

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

There is no man that can teach us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison.

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.

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

...the greatest tyrants over women are women.

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.

Who has not seen how women bully women? What tortures have men to endure compared to those daily repeated shafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor women are riddled by the tyrants of their sex?