William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes & Sayings

Jos growled from under the counterpane to know what the time was; but when he at last extorted from the blushing Major (who never told fibs, however they might be to his advantage) what was the real hour of the morning, he broke out into a volley of bad language, which we will not repeat here, but by which he gave Dobbin to understand that he would jeopardy his soul if he got up at that moment, that the Major might go and be hanged, that he would not travel with Dobbin, and that it was most unkind and ungentlemanlike to disturb a man out of his sleep in that way; on which the discomfited Major was obliged to retreat, leaving Jos to resume his interrupted slumbers. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

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

If you will fling yourself under the wheels, Juggernaut will go over you; depend upon it. — William Makepeace Thackeray

The Pall Mall Gazette is written by gentlemen for gentlemen. — William Makepeace Thackeray

You, who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your calling, are a snob; as are you who boast of your wealth. — William Makepeace Thackeray

So they pass away: friends, kindred, the dearest-loved, grown people, aged, infants. As we go on the down-hill journey, the mile-stones are grave-stones, and on each more and more names are written; unless haply you live beyond man's common age, when friends have dropped off, and, tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you reach the terminus alone. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

Pray, dear madam, another glass; it is Christmas time, it will do you no harm. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Love makes fools of us all, big and little. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Only to two or three persons in all the world are the reminiscences of a man's early youth interesting: to the parent who nursed him; to the fond wife or child mayhap afterwards who loves him; to himself always and supremely
whatever may be his actual prosperity or ill fortune, his present age, illness, difficulties, renown, or disappointments
the dawn of his life still shines brightly for him, the early griefs and delights and attachments remain with him ever faithful and dear. — William Makepeace Thackeray

How do men feel whose whole lives (and many men's lives are) are lies, schemes, and subterfuges? What sort of company do they keep when they are alone? Daily in life I watch men whose every smile is an artifice, and every wink is an hypocrisy. Doth such a fellow where a mask in his own privacy, and to his own conscience? — William Makepeace Thackeray

For his part, every beauty of art or nature made him thankful as well as happy, and that the pleasure to be had in listening to fine music, as in looking at the stars in the sky, or at a beautiful landscape or picture, was a benefit for which we might thank Heaven as sincerely as for any other worldly blessing. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

Never marry with the expectation of changing a person. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Kindness is very indigestible. It disagrees with proud stomachs. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Charming Alnaschar visions! It is the happy privilege of youth to construct you, and many a fanciful creature besides Rebecca Sharp has indulged in these delightful daydreams ere now! — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt; how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Oh, those women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make darlings of their ugliest thoughts. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Women like not only to conquer, but to be conquered. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard ... 'Tis the living up to it that's difficult. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Might I give counsel to any man, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and in life, that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what great men admire. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

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

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

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

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

What a charming reconciler and peacemaker money us! — William Makepeace Thackeray

Why do they always put mud into coffee on board steamers? Why does the tea generally taste of boiled boots? — William Makepeace Thackeray

..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, — William Makepeace Thackeray

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, or on the turning of a street, or on somebody else's turning of a street, or on somebody else's doing of something else in Downing Street or in Timbuctoo, now or a thousand years ago. — William Makepeace Thackeray

To know nothing, or little, is in the nature of some husbands. To hide, in the nature of how many women? Oh, ladies! how many of you have surreptitious milliners' bills? How many of you have gowns and bracelets which you daren't show, or which you wear trembling?
trembling, and coaxing with smiles the husband by your side, who does not know the new velvet gown from the old one, or the new bracelet from last year's, or has any notion that the ragged-looking yellow lace scarf cost forty guineas and that Madame Bobinot is writing dunning letters every week for the money! — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

Ah! gracious Heaven gives us eyes to see our own wrong, however dim age may make them; and knees not too stiff to kneel, in spite of years, cramp, and rheumatism. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

Presently, we were aware of an odour gradually coming towards us, something musky, fiery, savoury, mysterious, - a hot drowsy smell, that lulls the senses, and yet enflames them, - the truffles were coming. — William Makepeace Thackeray

This abattement and degradation did not take place all at once; it was brought about by degrees — William Makepeace Thackeray

Follow your honest convictions and be strong. — William Makepeace Thackeray

If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men's failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal's natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle? — William Makepeace Thackeray

Here is a minute. It may be my love is dead, but here is a minute to kneel over the grave and pray by it. — William Makepeace Thackeray

How lonely we are in the world; how selfish and secret, everybody! — William Makepeace Thackeray

Almost all women have hearts full of pity. — William Makepeace Thackeray

It's a great comfort to some people to groan over their imaginary ills. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Bravery never goes out of fashion. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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. — William Makepeace Thackeray

before I was married I didn't care what bills I put my name to, and so long as Moses would wait or Levy would renew for three months, I kept on never minding. But since I'm married, except renewing, of course, I give you my honour I've not touched a bit of stamped paper. — William Makepeace Thackeray

If a man has committed wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his errors out to the world than his own relations ... — William Makepeace Thackeray

People hate as they love, unreasonably. — William Makepeace Thackeray

If you are not allowed to touch the heart sometimes in spite of syntax, and are not to be loved until you all know the difference between trimeter and trameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every schoolmaster perish miserably! — William Makepeace Thackeray

A fool can no more see his own folly than he can see his ears. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

If he had but a little more brains, she thought to herself, I might make something of him; but she never let him perceive the opinion she had of him; listened with indefatigable complacency to his stories of the stable and the mess; laughed at all his jokes...When he came home, she was alert and happy; when he went out she pressed him to go; when he stayed at home, she played and sang for him, made him good drinks, superintended his dinner, warmed his slippers, and steeped his soul in comfort. The best of women {I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites. We don't know how much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often those frank smile which they wear so easily are traps to cajole or elude or disarm--I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models and paragons of female virute. — William Makepeace Thackeray

But, lo! and just as the coach drove off, Miss Sharp put her pale face out of the window and actually flung the book back into the garden. — William Makepeace Thackeray

It is all very well for you, who have probably never seen any spiritual manifestations, to talk as you do; but if you had seen what I have witnessed you would hold a different opinion. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

He firmly believed that everything he did was right, that he ought on all occasions to have his own way - and like the sting of a wasp or serpent his hatred rushed out armed and poisonous against anything like opposition. He was proud of his hatred as of everything else. 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? As — William Makepeace Thackeray

If you take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better than his neighbour? A comfortable career of prosperity, if it does not make people honest, at least keeps them so. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Those who are gone, you have. Those who departed loving you, love you still; and you love them always. They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true; they are only gone into the next room; and you will presently get up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you will be no more seen. — William Makepeace Thackeray

A good laugh is sunshine in the house. — William Makepeace Thackeray

He thought about a thousand things but these in his rapid walk to his quarters - his past life and future chances - the fate which might be before him - the wife, the child perhaps, from whom unseen he might be about to part. Oh, how he wished that night's work undone! and that with a clear conscience at least he might say farewell to the tender and guileless being by whose love he had set such little store! — William Makepeace Thackeray

He first selected the smallest one ... and then bowed his head as though he were saying grace. Opening his mouth very wide, he struggled for a moment, after which all was over. I shall never forget the comic look of despair he cast upon the other five over-occupied shells. I asked him how he felt. 'Profoundly grateful,' he said, 'as if I had swallowed a small baby.' — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

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

Frequent the company of your betters. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

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

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

Humor is wit and love. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

It is comparatively easy to leave a mistress, but very hard to be left by one. — William Makepeace Thackeray

All amusements to which virtuous women are not admitted, are, rely upon it, deleterious in their nature. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Tis hard with respect to Beauty, that its possessor should not have a life enjoyment of it, but be compelled to resign it after, at the most, some forty years lease — William Makepeace Thackeray

The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is forever in a passion. — William Makepeace Thackeray

To be rich, to be famous? do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under ground, along with the idle titles engraven on your coffin? But only true love lives after you, follows your memory with secret blessings or pervades you, and intercedes for you. Non omnis moriar, if, dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am lost and hopeless, living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me. — William Makepeace Thackeray

When one fib becomes due as it were, you must forge another to take up the old acceptance; and so the stock of your lies in circulation inevitably multiplies, and the danger of detection increases every day. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

If a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relative to do the business. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Mr Moss's courtyard is railed in like a cage, lest the gentlemen who are boarding with him should take a fancy to escape from his hospitality. — William Makepeace Thackeray

If I mayn't tell you what I feel, what is the use of a friend? — William Makepeace Thackeray

I have long gone about with a conviction on my mind that I had a work to do - a Work, if you like, with a great W; a Purpose to fulfil; ... a Great Social Evil to Discover and to Remedy. — William Makepeace Thackeray

There was a picture of the family over the mantelpiece, removed thither from the front room after Mrs. Osborne's death - George was on a pony, the elder sister holding him up a bunch of flowers; the younger led by her mother's hand; all with red cheeks and large red mouths, simpering on each other in the approved family-portrait manner. The mother lay underground now, long since forgotten - the sisters and brother had a hundred different interests of their own, and, familiar still, were utterly estranged from each other. Some few score of years afterwards, when all the parties represented are grown old, what bitter satire there is in those flaunting childish family-portraits, with their farce of sentiment and smiling lies, and innocence so self-conscious and self-satisfied. Osborne's — William Makepeace Thackeray

It is quite edifying to hear women speculate upon the worthlessness and the duration of beauty. But though virtue is a much finer thing, and those hapless creatures who suffer under the misfortune of good looks ought to be continually put in mind of the fate which awaits them; and though, very likely, the heroic female character which ladies admire is a more glorious and beautiful object than the kind, fresh, smiling, artless, tender little domestic goddess, whom men are inclined to worship - yet the latter and inferior sort of women must have this consolation - that the men do admire them after all; and that, in spite of all our kind friends' warnings and protests, we go on in our desperate error and folly, — William Makepeace Thackeray

The captain would ... turn off the conversation, like a consummate man of the world, to some topic of general interest, such as the Opera, the Prince's last ball at Carlton House, or the weather - that blessing to society. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

She lived in her past life- these relics and remembrances of dead affection were all that was left her in the world. — William Makepeace Thackeray

I regularly frequent St. George';s, Hanover Square, during the genteel marriage season; and though I have never seen the bridegroom's male friends give way to tears, or the beadles and officiating clergy in any way affected, yet it is not at all uncommon to see women who are not in the least concerned in the operations going on
old ladies who are long past marrying, stout middle-aged females with plenty of sons and daughters, let alone pretty young creatures in pink bonnets, who are on their promotion, and may naturally taken an interest in the ceremony
I say it is quite common to see the women present piping, sobbing, sniffling; hiding their little faces in their little useless pocket-handkerchiefs; and heaving, old and young, with emotion. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

Where is truth, forsooth, and who knoweth it? Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so? Does Venus squint? Has she got a splay-foot, red hair, and a crooked back? Anoint my eyes, good Fairy Puck, so that I may ever consider the Beloved Object a paragon! Above all, keep on anointing my mistress's dainty peepers with the very strongest ointment, so that my noddle may ever appear lovely to her, and that she may continue to crown my honest ears with fresh roses! — William Makepeace Thackeray

Humor is the mistress of tears. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

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. — William Makepeace Thackeray

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

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Women are jealous of cigars ... they regard them as a strong rival. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Isidor thought for a moment he had gone mad, and that he wished his valet to cut his throat. — William Makepeace Thackeray

What part of confidante has that poor teapot played ever since the kindly plant was introduced among us! Why myriads of women have cried over it, to be sure! [ ... ] Nature meant very kindly by women when she made the tea plant; and with a little thought, what series of pictures and groups of the fancy may conjure up and assemble round the teapot and cup. — William Makepeace Thackeray