400 Quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray

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

The tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, it is a meanness to calculate the difference.

To be rich, to be famous? do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under ground, along with the idle titles engraven on your coffin? But only true love lives after you, follows your memory with secret blessings or pervades you, and intercedes for you. Non omnis moriar, if, dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am lost and hopeless, living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.

It is an awful thing to get a glimpse, as one sometimes does, when the time is past, of some little, little wheel which works the whole mighty machinery of fate, and see how our destinies turn on a minute's delay or advance.

Lucky he who has been educated to bear his fate, whatsoever it may be, by an early example of uprightness, and a childish training in honor.

We know that Heaven chastens those whom it loves best; being pleased by repeated trials, to make . . . pure spirits more pure.

A cheerful look brings joy to the heart.

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.

Oh, brother wearers of motley, are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and trembling and the jingling of cap and bells?