William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible.

Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?

..though Miss Rebecca Sharp has twice had occasion to thank Heaven, it has been, in the first place, for ridding her of some person whom she hated, and secondly, for enabling her to bring her enemies to some sort of perplexity or confusion; neither of which are very amiable motives for religious gratitude,

The little cares, fears, tears, timid misgivings, sleepless fancies of I don't know how many days and nights, were forgotten under one moment's influence of that familiar, irresistible smile.

I can endure poverty but not shame-neglect but not insult,and insult from you..

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.

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.

Miss Sedley was almost as flurried at the act of defiance as Miss Jemima had been; for, consider, it was but one minute that she had left school, and the impressions of six years are not got over in that space of time. Nay, with some persons those awes and terrors of youth last for ever and ever. I know, for instance, an old gentleman of sixty-eight, who said to me one morning at breakfast, with a very agitated countenance, 'I dreamed last night that I was flogged by Dr Raine.' Fancy had carried him back five-and-fifty years in the course of that evening. Dr Raine and his rod were just as awful to him in his heart then, at sixty-eight, as they had been at thirteen. If the Doctor, with a large birch, had appeared bodily to him, even at the age of threescore and eight, and had said in awful voice, 'Boy, take down your pants...' Well, well...

Perhaps in Vanity Fair there are no better satires than letters. Take a bundle of your dear friend’s of ten years back — your dear friend whom you hate now. Look at a file of your sister’s! How you clung to each other till you quarreled about the twenty-pound legacy! Get down the round-hand scrawls of your son who has half broken your heart with selfish undutifulness since; or a parcel of your own, breathing endless ardour and love eternal, which were sent back by your mistress when she married the Nabob — your mistress for whom you now care no more than for Queen Elizabeth. Vows, love, promises, confidences, gratitude; how queerly they read after a while! There ought to be a law in Vanity Fair ordering the destruction of every written document (except receipted tradesmen’s bills) after a certain brief and proper interval. Those quacks and misanthropes who advertise indelible Japan ink should be made to perish along with their wicked discoveries. The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one that faded utterly in a couple of days, and left the paper clean and blank, so that you might write on it to somebody else

Had he drunk a dozen bottles of claret, the old spinster could have pardoned him. Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan drank claret. Gentlemen drank claret. But eighteen glasses of gin consumed among boxers in an ignoble pot-house - it was an odious crime, and not to be pardoned readily.

It is better to love wisely, no doubt: but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all

Are not there little chapters in everybody’s life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?

We are most of us very lonely in the world. You who have any who love you, cling to them, and thank God.

Ez a történet nem érte el célját, ha az olvasó nem vette észre, hogy az őrnagy fajankó volt.

He had placed himself at her feet so long that the poor little woman had been accustomed to trample upon him. She didn't wish to marry him, but she wished to keep him. She wished to give him nothing, but that he should give her all. It is a bargain not unfrequently levied in love.