Quotes from William Makepeace Thackeray

dancing over it—had this happened a week ago, Sir

If every person is to be banished from society who runs into debt and cannot pay—if we are to be peering into everybody's private life, speculating upon their income, and cutting them if we don't approve of their expenditure—why, what a howling wilderness and intolerable dwelling Vanity Fair would be!

And 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.

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 dulness takes the lead in the world?

To watch the behaviour of a fine lady to other and humbler women is a very good sport for a philosophical frequenter of Vanity Fair.

Some days after quitting St. Helena, says that document, the expedition fell in with a ship coming from Europe, and was thus made acquainted with the warlike rumors then afloat, by which a collision with the English marine was rendered possible. The Prince de Joinville immediately assembled the officers of the 'Belle Poule,' to deliberate on an event so unexpected and important.

When you think that the eyes of your childhood dried at the sight of a piece of gingerbread, and that a plum cake was a compensation for the agony of parting with your mamma and sisters, oh my friend and brother, you need not be too confident of your own fine feelings.

He was rather dull, perhaps, but would not such wine make any conversation pleasant?

But she had never been a girl, she said; she had been a woman since she was eight years old. O why did Miss Pinkerton let such a dangerous bird into her cage?

Para un hombre que ha cometido una falta no conozco censor más implacable que sus propios parientes.

For novelists have the privilege of knowing everything.

And do not let squeamish Tories cry out about disloyalty; if the crown does wrong, the crown must be corrected by the nation, out of respect, of course, for the crown.

The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the destinies of mankind is pleased so to humiliate and cast down the tender, good, and wise; and to set up the selfish, or foolish, or the wicked.

My wife says you have been singing like an angel,' he said to Becky. Now there are angels of two kinds, and both sorts, it is said, are charming in their way.

And she began, forthwith, to tell her story—a tale so neat, simple, and artless that it was quite evident from hearing her that if ever there was a white-robed angel escaped from heaven to be subject to the infernal machinations and villainy of fiends here below, that spotless being—that miserable unsullied martyr, was present on the bed before Jos—on the bed, sitting on the brandy-bottle.

To part with money is a sacrifice beyond almost all men endowed with a sense of order. There is scarcely any man alive who does not think himself meritorious for giving his neighbour five pounds.

Thriftless gives, not from a beneficent pleasure in giving, but from a lazy delight in spending.

If I had time and dared to enter into digressions, I would write a chapter about that first pint of porter drunk upon English ground. Ah, how good it is! It is worth-while to leave home for a year, just to enjoy that one draught.

El mundo es un espejo que devuelve a cada uno su imagen.

A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did.

If a person is too poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he must sweep his own rooms:

In effective womanly beauty form is more than face, and manner more than either.

'No business before breakfast, Glum!' says the King. 'Breakfast first, business next.'

Next to excellence is the appreciation of it