400 Quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray

How grateful are we – how touched a frank and generous heart is for a kind word extended to us in our pain! The pressure of a tender hand nerves a man for an operation, and cheers him for the dreadful interview with the surgeon.

He who meanly admires a mean thing is a snob – perhaps that is a safe definition of the character.

Tis hard with respect to Beauty, that its possessor should not have a life enjoyment of it, but be compelled to resign it after, at the most, some forty years lease.

By humbly and frankly acknowledging yourself to be in the wrong, there is no knowing, my son, what good you may do. I knew once a gentleman and very worthy practitioner in Vanity Fair, who used to do little wrongs to his neighbours on purpose, and in order to apologise for them in an open and manly way afterwards – and what ensued? My friend Crocky Doyle was liked everywhere, and deemed to be rather impetuous – but the honestest fellow.

I can’t help always falling upon it, and cry out with particular loudness and wailing, and become especially melancholy, when I see a dead love tied to a live love.

To our betters eve can reconcile ourselves, if you please – respecting them sincerely, laughing at their jokes, making allowance for their stupidities, meekly suffering their insolence; but we can’t pardon our equals going beyond us.

He had placed himself at her feet so long that the poor little woman had been accustomed to trample upon him. She didn’t wish to marry him, but she wished to keep him. She wished to give him nothing, but that he should give her all. It is a bargain not unfrequently levied in love.

Remember, it’s as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.

He was always thinking of his brother’s soul, or of the souls of those who differed with him in opinion: it is a sort of comfort which many of the serious give themselves.