Quotes from 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!

When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole.

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?

There is no man that can teach us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison.

As if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than the man who blacks my boots.

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.

If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man.

What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.

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.

When a mother, as fond mothers will; vows that she knows every thought in her daughter's heart, I think she pretends to know a great deal too much.

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

A good laugh is sunshine in the house.

The world is good natured to people who are good natured.

The great moments of life are but moments like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes, a mere pressure of the hand, may decide it; or of the lips, though they cannot speak.

All is vanity, look you; and so the preacher is vanity too.

The affection of young ladies is of as rapid growth as Jack's beanstalk, and reaches up to the sky in a night.

Good humour is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.

Come forward, some great marshal, and organize equality in society, and your rod shall swallow up all the juggling old court gold-sticks

Vanity is often the unseen spur.

It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit

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.

I never know whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.