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William Makepeace Thackeray
85 quotes
“Profoundly grateful, and as if I had swallowed a small baby. … Why, they are perfect beasts of oysters!”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Thackeray's reply when asked how he felt upon eating an unusually large American oyster during his first visit to the United States (1852–3); reported in James Grant Wilson, Thackeray in the United States: 1852–3, 1855–…
“She looks so haughty that I should have thought her a princess at the very least, with a pedigree reaching as far back as the Deluge. But this lady was no better born than many other ladies who give themselves airs; and all sensible people laughed at her absurd pretensions.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Rose and the Ring (1855), Ch. 2.
“Except for the young or very happy, I can't say I am sorry for any one who dies.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) first seen 1856 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Mrs. Bryan Waller Procter (26 November 1856), from The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Edgar F. Harden [Garland Publishing, Inc., 1994, ], vol. 1, p. 763.
“I should like to see before I die, and think of it daily more and more, the commencement of Jesus Christ's christianism in the world, where I am sure people may be made a hundred times happier than by its present forms, Judaism, ascenticism, Bullarism.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) first seen 1840 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Thackeray, William Makepeace. Nov. 1840, A Collection of Letters (1887). Ardent Media. p. 36.
“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.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Good humour may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us be very gentle with our neighbours' failings; and forgive our friends their debts, as we hope ourselves to be forgiven.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I say I know women, I mean I know that I don't know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as I have no doubt she is to herself.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Stupid people, people who do not know how to laugh, are always pompous and self-conceited.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Time passes—Time the consoler—Time the anodyne—Time the grey calm satirist, whose sad smile seems to say, Look, O man, at the vanity of the objects you pursue, and of yourself who pursue them!”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is impossible, in our condition of society, not to be sometimes a Snob.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you will fling yourself under the wheels, will go over you, depend upon it.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That which we call a Snob, by any other name would still be Snobbish.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life of the time; of the manners, the movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of society—the old times live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life that is the most wholesome society; 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.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I suppose as long as novels last and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero, a wicked monster his opposite, and a pretty girl who finds a champion; bravery and virtue conquer beauty: and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him and honest folks come by their own.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own. One suspects the genuineness of the tear, the naturalness of the humour.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no man that teaches us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Humour is the mistress of tears; she knows the way to the fons lachrymarum, strikes in dry and rugged places with her enchanting wand, and bids the fountain gush and sparkle. She has refreshed myriads more from her natural springs, than ever tragedy has watered from her pompous old urn.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire hopeless passion is my destiny.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Remember, it's as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We see flowers of good blooming in foul places.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'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 (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If there is a verity in wine, according to the old adage, what an amiable-natured character Dick's must have been! In proportion as he took in wine he overflowed with kindness.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think Steele shone rather than sparkled.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dick never thought that his bottle companion was a butt to aim at—only a friend to shake by the hand.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We love being in love, that's the truth on't.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be beautiful is enough. If a woman can do that well, who shall demand more from her? You don't want a rose to sing.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 very rare articles indeed.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 forever 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 (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bad husbands will make bad wives.”
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) said by 1863 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source