William Makepeace Thackeray quotes - page 3

And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump may marry whom she likes. (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. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
The play is done the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompters bell A moment yet the actor stops And looks around to say farewell. It is an irksome word and task And when hes laughed and said his say He shows, as he removes the mask, A face thats anything but gay. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
An evil person is like a dirty window, they never let the light shine through. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
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. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
A person can't help their birth. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history? View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
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. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
Christmas is here Winds whistle shrill, Icy and chill. Little care we Little we fear Weather without, Sheltered about The Mahogany Tree. (William Makepeace Thackeray)
Whenever he met a great man he groveled before him, and my-lorded him as only a free-born Briton can do. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
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. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
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. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
it is the ordinary lot of people to have no friends if they themselves care for nobody. View quote
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. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
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. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire hopeless passion is my destiny. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
And as every one of their dear sex is the rival of the rest of her kind, timidity passes for folly in their charitable judgements; and gentleness for dullness; and silence -- which is but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling folks, and tacit protestantism -- above all, finds no mercy at the hands of the female Inquisition. (William Makepeace Thackeray)
Here was a man who could not spell, and did not care to read - who had the habits and the cunning of a boor: whose aim in life was pettifogging: who never had a taste, or emotion, or enjoyment, but was sordid and soil; and yet he had rank, and honors, and power, somehow: and was dignitary of the land, and a pillar of the state. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
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. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
George, be a King! View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray