Top 100 William Makepeace Quotes
#1. 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
#2. Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned have a great tenderness and pity for the poor folks who are not endowed with the prodigious talents which we have.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#4. 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!.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#6. The tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, it is a meanness to calculate the difference.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#7. And by these wonderful circumstances I was once more free again: and I kept my resolution then made, never to fall more into the hands of any recruiter, and henceforth and for ever to be a gentleman.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#8. A good woman is the loveliest flower that blooms under heaven; and we look with love and wonder upon its silent grace, its pure fragrance, its delicate bloom of beauty.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. Who has not remarked the readiness with which the closest of friends and honestest of men suspect and accuse each other of cheating when they fall out on money matters? Everybody does it. Everybody is right, I suppose, and the world is a rogue.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#16. Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men's faces that is honored wherever presented. You cannot help trusting such men. Their very presence gives confidence. There is promise to pay in their faces which gives confidence and you prefer it to another man's endorsement. Character is credit.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#17. What is a gentleman? It is to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise; and possessed of all these qualities to exercise them in the most graceful manner.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#20. What man's life is not overtaken by one or more of those tornadoes that send us out of the course, and fling us on rocks to shelter as best we may?
William Makepeace Thackeray
#23. 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
#24. Under the magnetism of friendship the modest man becomes bold; the shy, confident; the lazy, active; and the impetuous, prudent and peaceful.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#26. It is in the nature and instinct of some women. Some are made to scheme, and some to love; and I wish any respected bachelor that reads this may take the sort that best likes him.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#27. 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.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#28. Hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be offended.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#32. He was always thinking of his brother's soul, or of the souls of those who differed with him in opinion: it is a sort of comfort which many of the serious give themselves.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#35. 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
#36. 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
#39. 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!
William Makepeace Thackeray
#40. I like Mr. Dickens' books much better than yours, Papa. Said one of Thackeray's daughters.
David Markson
#42. 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
#43. Werther had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#44. I have seen no men in life loving their profession so much as painters, except, perhaps, actors, who, when not engaged themselves, always go to the play.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. I never was much of an oyster eater, nor can I relish them 'in naturalibus' as some do, but require a quantity of sauces, lemons, cayenne peppers, bread and butter, and so forth, to render them palatable.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#49. If fathers are sometimes sulky at the appearance of the destined son-in-law, is it not a fact that mothers become sentimental and, as it were, love their own loves over again.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#50. 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
#51. Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#53. Happiest time of youth and life, when love is first spoken and returned; when the dearest eyes are daily shining welcome, and the fondest lips never tire of whispering their sweet secrets; when the parting look that accompanies "Good night!" gives delightful warning of tomorrow.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#54. A snob is that man or woman who is always pretending to be something better
especially richer or more fashionable
than he is.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#56. At certain periods of life, we live years of emotion in a few weeks, and look back on those times as on great gaps between the old life and the new.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. For my part, I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses,
the very easiest to be deadened when wakened, and in some never wakened at all.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#62. The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#63. The world is full of love and pity, I say. Had there been less suffering, there would have been less kindness.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#64. 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
#66. Oh, my young friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love-business, and how undignified, sometimes, the end!
William Makepeace Thackeray
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because it is transitory, dislikes roast beef?
William Makepeace Thackeray
#73. We know that Heaven chastens those whom it loves best; being pleased by repeated trials, to make ... pure spirits more pure.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#75. 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
#76. It was in the reign of George II. that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled ; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now
William Makepeace Thackeray
#78. 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
#79. Though small was your allowance,
You saved a little store:
And those who save a little,
Shall get a plenty more.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#80. There are other books in a man's library besides Ovid, and after dawdling ever so long at a woman's knee, one day he gets up and is free. We have all been there; we have all had the fever
the strongest and the smallest, from Samson, Hercules, Rinaldo, downward: but it burns out, and you get well.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#81. It may be whispered to those uninitiated people who are anxious to know the habits and make the acquaintance of men of letters, that there are no race of people who talk about books, or, perhaps, who read books, so little as literary men.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#82. 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
#83. 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
#86. It is from the level of calamities, not that of every-day life, that we learn impressive and useful lessons.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#87. As fits the holy Christmas birth, Be this, good friends, our carol still Be peace on earth, be peace on earth, To men of gentle will.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#90. We can't all be lions in this world. There must be some lambs, harmless, kindly, gregarious creatures for eating and shearing.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#91. 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
#93. Oh, brother wearers of motley, are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and trembling and the jingling of cap and bells?
William Makepeace Thackeray
#94. We are most of us very lonely in this world; you who have any who love you, cling to them and thank God.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#95. 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
#96. When a man is in love with one woman in a family, it is astonishing how fond he becomes of every person connected with it.
William Makepeace Thackeray
