William Makepeace Thackeray > Quotes

“Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray

“To love and win is the best thing.
To love and lose, the next best.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray

“Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Sketches and Travels, Etc.

“Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“All is vanity, nothing is fair.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“If a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relative to do the business.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“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.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“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. ”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“People hate as they love, unreasonably.”
― William M. Thackeray

“There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.

“In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?-Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“...the greatest tyrants over women are women.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“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?”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“A good laugh is sunshine in a house”
― William Makepeace Thackeray

“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.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“A person can't help their birth. ”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“I would rather make my name then inherit it. ”
― William Makepeace Thackeray

“It is better to love wisely, no doubt: but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all”
― William Makepeace Thackeray

“It was in the reign of George II. that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled ; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. written by himself

“Bravery never goes out of fashion. ”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, The Four Georges and the English Humourists

“One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object, in order, as we said, to be consistent.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“if you are not allowed to touch the heart sometimes in spite of syntax, and are not to be loved until you all know the difference between trimeter and trameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every schoolmaster perish miserably!”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“it is the ordinary lot of people to have no friends if they themselves care for nobody”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair