Quotes from William Makepeace Thackeray

Those who forgets their friends to follow those of a higher status are truly snobs.

To endure is greater than to dare to tire out hostile fortune to be daunted by no difficulty to keep heart when all have lost it -- who can say this is not greatness

Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.

To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.

Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.

Revenge may be wicked, but it's natural.

Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?

Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.

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

All is vanity, nothing is fair.

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

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

The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice.

A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair of bright eyes make pardonable? What dullness may not red lips are sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.

In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.

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

The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?

the greatest tyrants over women are women.

A good laugh is sunshine in a house

A person can't help their birth.

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

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

Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.