400 Quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray

We can’t all be lions in this world. There must be some lambs, harmless, kindly, gregarious creatures for eating and shearing.

I never was much of an oyster eater, nor can I relish them ‘in naturalibus’ as some do, but require a quantity of sauces, lemons, cayenne peppers, bread and butter, and so forth, to render them palatable.

A person can’t help their birth.

Which of us that is thirty years old has not had its Pompeii? Deep under ashes lies the life of youth – the careless sport, the pleasure and the passion, the darling joy.

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.

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.

Those we love can but walk down to the pier with us – the voyage we must make alone.

To be beautiful is enough! if a woman can do that well who should demand more from her? You don’t want a rose to sing.

All the world used her ill, said this young misanthropist,... and we may be pretty certain that persons whom all the world treats ill, deserve entirely the treatment they get. 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.