Top 100 William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes
#4. This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is - A sort of soup or broth, or brew, Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, That Greenwich never could outdo; Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron, Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace; All these you eat at Terre's tavern, In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#5. 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
#8. Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#12. At that comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain we had a bouillabaisse than which a better was never eaten at Marseilles; and not the least headache in the morning, I give you my word; on the contrary, you only wake with a sweet refreshing thirst for claret and water.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#13. How grateful are we
how touched a frank and generous heart is for a kind word extended to us in our pain! The pressure of a tender hand nerves a man for an operation, and cheers him for the dreadful interview with the surgeon.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#16. There is no good in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else. The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#17. Think of the condition of Europe for twenty years before, where people were fighting, not by thousands, but by millions; each one of whom as he struck his enemy wounded horribly some other innocent heart far away.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#22. I hope the artist who illustrates this work will take care to do justice to his portrait. Mr. Clive himself, let that painter be assured, will not be too well pleased if his countenance and figure do not receive proper attention.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#23. Let me whisper my belief, entre nous, that of those eminent philosophers who cry out against parsons the loudest, there are not many who have got their knowledge of the church by going thither often.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#24. Let a man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world yields, or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and you will succeed.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#26. When I say that 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
#27. I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because it is transitory, dislikes roast beef?
William Makepeace Thackeray
#29. 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.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#31. It is better to love wisely, no doubt: but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all
William Makepeace Thackeray
#32. I can't help always falling upon it, and cry out with particular loudness and wailing, and become especially melancholy, when I see a dead love tied to a live love.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#33. I want a sofa, as I want a friend, upon which I can repose familiarly. If you can't have intimate terms and freedom with one and the other, they are of no good.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#35. 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
#38. 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?
William Makepeace Thackeray
#40. 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.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#41. You can't order remembrance out of the mind; and a wrong that was a wrong yesterday must be a wrong to-morrow.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#42. A pair of bright eyes with a dozen glances suffice to subdue a man; to enslave him, and enflame him; to make him even forget; they dazzle him so that the past becomes straightway dim to him; and he so prizes them that he would give all his life to possess 'em.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#43. Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?
William Makepeace Thackeray
#44. Who feels injustice, who shrinks before a slight, who has a sense of wrong so acute, and so glowing a gratitude for kindness, as a generous boy?
William Makepeace Thackeray
#45. What tortures have men to endure, comparable to those daily repeated shafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor women are riddled by the tyrants of their sex?
William Makepeace Thackeray
#46. Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin That never has known the barber's shear, All your wish is woman to win, This is the way that boys begin. Wait till you come to Forty Year.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#47. 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
#49. Which of us that is thirty years old has not had its Pompeii? Deep under ashes lies the life of youth
the careless sport, the pleasure and the passion, the darling joy.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#54. A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#56. Women only know how to wound so. There is a poison on the tips of their little shafts, which stings a thousand times more than a man's blunter weapon.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#62. Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#63. Such people there are living and flourishing in the world - Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless: let us have at them, dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, and very successful too, mere quacks and fools: and it was to combat and expose such as those, no doubt, that Laughter was made,
William Makepeace Thackeray
#65. Our great thoughts, our great affections, the truths of our life, never leave us. Surely they can not separate from our consciousness, shall follow it whithersoever that shall go, and are of their nature divine and immortal.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#67. Cheerfulness means a contented spirit, a pure heart, a kind and loving disposition; it means humility and ~ charity, a generous appreciation of others, and a modest opinion of self.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#69. We pass by common objects or persons without noticing them; but the keen eye detects and notes types everywhere and among all classes.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#70. In a word, in adversity she was the best of comforters, in good fortune the most troublesome of friends ...
William Makepeace Thackeray
#73. Oh, those women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make darlings of their ugliest thoughts.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#75. Peace to thee, kind and selfish, vain and generous old heathen! - We shall see thee no more. Let us hope that Lady Jane supported her kindly, and led her with gentle hand out of the busy struggle of Vanity Fair.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#77. But it's a changeable world! When we consider how great our sorrow seem, and how small they are; how we think we shall die of grief, and how quickly we forget, I think we ought to be ashamed of ourselves and our fickle-heartedness. For, after all, what business has Time to bring us consolation?
William Makepeace Thackeray
#80. 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
#81. 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
#83. And, perhaps, Mr. Dobbin's sentimental Amelia was no more like the real one than this absurd little print which he cherished. But what man in love, of us, is better informed? - or is he much happier when he sees and owns his delusion?
William Makepeace Thackeray
#84. 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
#87. To our betters eve can reconcile ourselves, if you please
respecting them sincerely, laughing at their jokes, making allowance for their stupidities, meekly suffering their insolence; but we can't pardon our equals going beyond us.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#88. Certain corpuscles, denominated Christmas Books, with the ostensible intention of swelling the tide of exhilaration, or other expansive emotions, incident upon the exodus of the old and the inauguration of the New Year.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#90. Could the best and kindest of us who depart from the earth have an opportunity of revisiting it, I suppose he or she (assuming that any Vanity Fair feelings subsist in the sphere whither we are bound) would have a pang of mortification at finding how soon our survivors were consoled.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#92. 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
William Makepeace Thackeray
#94. 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
#95. That acknowledgment of weakness which we make in imploring to be relieved from hunger and from temptation is surely wisely put in our daily prayer. Think of it, you who are rich, and take heed how you turn a beggar away.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#97. If you had told Sycorax that her son Caliban was as handsome as Apollo, she would have been pleased, witch as she was.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#99. Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you.
William Makepeace Thackeray
