Quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray

... I regularly frequent St. George;s, Hanover Square, during the genteel marriage season; and though I have never seen the bridegrooms 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.

It is those who injure women who get the most kindness from them.

A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES.

Money has only a different value in the eyes of each.

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. He would not deny himself one enjoyment; not his opera-stall, not his horse, not his dinner, not even the pleasure of giving Lazarus the five pounds.

If a mans character is to be abused, say what you will, theres nobody like a relative to do the business.

Let the man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim. Attacking is his only secret. Dare, and the world always yields: or, if it beat you sometimes, dare again, and it will succumb.

Theres a great power of imagination about these little creatures, and a creative fancy and belief that is very curious to watch . . . I am sure that horrid matter-of-fact child-rearers . . . do away with the childs most beautiful privilege. I am determined that Anny shall have a very extensive and instructive store of learning in Tom Thumbs, Jack-the-Giant-Killers, etc.

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

Mark to yourself the gradual way in which you have been prepared for, and are now led by an irresistible necessity to enter upon your great labour.

Heaven help us! The girls have only to turn the tables,and say of one of their own sex,She is as vain as a man, and they will have perfect reason. The bearded creatures are quite as eager for praise, quite as finikin over their toilets, quite as proud of their personal advantages, quite as conscious of their powers of fascinations, as any coquette in the world.

Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.

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

People hate as they love, unreasonably.

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

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?

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.

let me whisper my belief, entre nous, that of those eminent philosophers who cry out against parsons the loudest, there are not many who have got their knowledge of the church by going thither often.

Cheerfulness means a contented spirit, a pure heart, a kind and loving disposition; it means humility and ~ charity, a generous appreciation of others, and a modest opinion of self.

Sorrows of Werther William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) WERTHER had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter. Charlotte was a married lady, 5 And a moral man was Werther, And for all the wealth of Indies Would do nothing for to hurt her. So he sigh’d and pin’d and ogled, And his passion boil’d and bubbled, 10 Till he blew his silly brains out, And no more was by it troubled. Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, 15 Went on cutting bread and butter.