Top 294 Quotes & Sayings by William Makepeace Thackeray - Page 2

When Fate wills that something should come to pass, she sends forth a million of little circumstances to clear and prepare the way.

It is a friendly heart that has plenty of friends.

Happy! Who is happy? Was there not a serpent in Paradise itself? And if Eve had been perfectly happy beforehand, would she have listened to the tempter?

Dare and the world always yields; or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and it will succumb.

Who was the blundering idiot who said 'fine words butter no parsnips'? Half the parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no other sauce.

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

You can't order remembrance out of the mind; and a wrong that was a wrong yesterday must be a wrong to-morrow.

Benevolence and feeling ennoble the most trifling actions.

I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses.

Bad husbands will make bad wives.

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?

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.

Business first; pleasure afterwards.

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

We who have lived before railways were made belong to another world. It was only yesterday, but what a gulf between now and then! Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth -- all these belong to the old period. But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark.

All is vanity, look you; and so the preacher is vanity too.

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

It is from the level of calamities, not that of every-day life, that we learn impressive and useful lessons.

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.

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.

Humor is wit and love.

When [men] see a pretty woman, and feel the delicious madness of love coming over them, they always stop to calculate her temper, her money, their own money, or suitableness for the married life.... Ha, ha, ha! Let us fool in this way no more. I have been in love forty-three times with all ranks and conditions of women, and would have married every time if they would have let me. How many wives had King Solomon, the wisest of men? And is not that story a warning to us that Love is master of the wisest? It is only fools who defy him.

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.

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

Sir, Respect Your Dinner: idolize it, enjoy it properly. You will be many hours in the week, many weeks in the year, and many years in your life happier if you do.

Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?

The great moments of life are but moments like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes; a mere pressure of the hand, may decide it; or of the lip,s though they cannot speak.

One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object, in order, as we said, to be consistent.

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?

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.

In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.

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.

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.

Choose a good disagreeable friend, if you be wise--a surly, steady, economical, rigid fellow.

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!.

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

You read the past in some old faces.

Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.

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

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!

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

If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!

A woman's heart is just like a lithographer's stone; what is once written upon it cannot be rubbed out.

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

Money has only a different value in the eyes of each.

To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted my no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forgo even ambition when the end is gained - who can say this is not greatness?

We love being in love, that's the truth on't. If we had not met Joan, we should have met Kate, and adored her. We know our mistresses are no better than many other women, nor no prettier, nor no wiser, nor no wittier. 'Tis not for these reasons we love a woman, or for any special quality or charm I know of; we might as well demand that a lady should be the tallest woman in the world, like the Shropshire giantess, as that she should be a paragon in any other character, before we began to love her.

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

...the greatest tyrants over women are women.

Those who forgets their friends to follow those of a higher status are truly snobs.

Vanity is often the unseen spur.

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."

Oh, Vanity of vanities! How wayward the decrees of Fate are; How very weak the very wise, How very small the very great are!

Pray God, keep us simple.