“As nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own, too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches!”
Source: Miscellanies: The Paris sketch book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh. The memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush. The Irish sketch book. Notes of a journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo
“Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it.”
Source: The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.
“A crow, who had flown away with a cheese from a dairy window, sate perched on a tree looking down at a great big frog in a pool underneath him.”
Source: The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family
“Sure, occasion is the father of most that is good in us.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray (Illustrated)
“When Fate wills that something should come to pass, she sends forth a million of little circumstances to clear and prepare the way.”
Source: The Adventures of Philip on His Way Through the World: Shewing who Robbed Him, who Helped Him, and who Passed Him by : to which is Now Prefixed A Shabby Genteel Story
“The great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself.”
Source: Miscellanies: Prose and Verse. ¬The Fitz-Boodle papers. Men's wives. A shabby genteel story. The history of Samuel Titmarsh and the great Hoggarty diamond
“I wonder is it because men are cowards in heart that they admire bravery so much, and place military valor so far beyond every other quality for reward and worship.”
Source: Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero
“As if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than the man who blacks my boots.”
Source: Pendennis
“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.”
Source: The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Queen Anne: Written by Himself
“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.”
Source: Catherine. Little travels The Fitz-Boodle papers, etc. etc
“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.”
Source: Pendennis
“Oh, brother wearers of motley, are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and trembling and the jingling of cap and bells?”
Source: Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero
“Choose a good disagreeable friend, if you be wise--a surly, steady, economical, rigid fellow.”
Source: The book of snobs. Sketches and travels in London. Denis Duval
“It is a friendly heart that has plenty of friends.”
Source: Miscellanies: The book of snobs. Sketches and travels in London. Denis Duval and other stories
“We are most of us very lonely in this world; you who have any who love you, cling to them and thank God.”
Source: Henry Esmond: And Lovel the Widower
“In effective womanly beauty form is more than face, and manner more than either.”
“Be it remembered that man subsists upon the air more than upon his meat and drink; but no one can exist for an hour without a copious supply of air. The atmosphere which some breathe is contaminated and adulterated, and with its vital principles so diminished that it cannot fully decarbonize the blood, nor fully excite the nervous system.”
“Happy! Who is happy? Was there not a serpent in Paradise itself? And if Eve had been perfectly happy beforehand, would she have listened to the tempter?”
“A woman's heart is just like a lithographer's stone; what is once written upon it cannot be rubbed out.”
“The thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair.”
Source: Roundabout Papers
“If fun is good, truth is still better, and love best of all.”
Source: The Works: In Twenty-two Volumes. ¬The book of snobs; and Sketches and travels in London
“True love is better than glory.”
Source: The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century
“What man's life is not overtaken by one or more of those tornadoes that send us out of the course, and fling us on rocks to shelter as best we may?”
Source: Henry Esmond: The English Humourists; The Four Georges
“The great moments of life are but moments like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes; a mere pressure of the hand, may decide it; or of the lip,s though they cannot speak.”
Source: Pendennis
“Almost all women have hearts full of pity.”
“Our measure of rewards and punishments is most partial and incomplete, absurdly inadequate, utterly worldly; and we wish to continue it into the next world. Into that next and awful world we strive to pursue men, and send after them our impotent paltry verdicts of condemnation or acquittal. We set up our paltry little rod to measure heaven immeasurable.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray (Illustrated)
“Ah! gracious Heaven gives us eyes to see our own wrong, however dim age may make them; and knees not too stiff to kneel, in spite of years, cramp, and rheumatism.”
Source: The works of William Makepeace Thackeray
“Titles are abolished; and the American Republic swarms with men claiming and bearing them.”
Source: The four Georges. The English humorists. Roundabout papers
“An immense percentage of snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of this mortal life.”
Source: The Book of Snobs
“He who meanly admires a mean thing is a snob--perhaps that is a safe definition of the character.”
“That which we call a snob by any other name would still be snobbish.”
Source: Miscellanies: The book of snobs. Sketches and travels in London. Denis Duval and other stories
“Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders.”
Source: Miscellanies: The book of snobs. Sketches and travels in London. Denis Duval and other stories
“Life is the soul's nursery.”
Source: Miscellanies: The memoirs of Barry Lyndon. The history of Samuel Titmarsh and the great Hoggarty diamond. Burlesques
“One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own.”
Source: The English humourists of the eighteenth century: a series of lectures
“One of the greatest of a great man's qualities is success; 't is the result of all the others; 't is a latent power in him which compels the favor of the gods, and subjugates fortune.”
Source: Henry Esmond: And Lovel the Widower
“Taste is something quite different from fashion, superior to fashion.”
“A man is seldom more manly than when he is what you call unmanned,--the source of his emotion is championship, pity, and courage; the instinctive desire to cherish those who are innocent and unhappy, and defend those who are tender and weak.”
Source: Miscellanies: The four Georges. The English humorists. Roundabout papers
“Time passes, Time the consoler, Time the anodyne.”
Source: Miscellanies: The book of snobs. Sketches and travels in London. Denis Duval
“Let us be very gentle with our neighbors' failings, and forgive our friends their debts as we hope ourselves to be forgiven.”
Source: Miscellanies: The book of snobs. Sketches and travels in London. Denis Duval and other stories
“Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned have a great tenderness and pity for the poor folks who are not endowed with the prodigious talents which we have.”
Source: The Christmas Books of Mr. M.a.titmarsh: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition
“All is vanity, look you; and so the preacher is vanity too.”
Source: The works of William Makepeace Thackeray
“An intelligent wife can make her home, in spite of exigencies, pretty much what she pleases.”
“Where is truth, forsooth, and who knoweth it? Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so? Does Venus squint? Has she got a splay-foot, red hair, and a crooked back? Anoint my eyes, good Fairy Puck, so that I may ever consider the Beloved Object a paragon! Above all, keep on anointing my mistress's dainty peepers with the very strongest ointment, so that my noddle may ever appear lovely to her, and that she may continue to crown my honest ears with fresh roses!”
Source: The Virginians: Christie's Collections
“I have long gone about with a conviction on my mind that I had a work to do-a Work, if you like, with a great W; a Purpose to fulfil; ... a Great Social Evil to Discover and to Remedy.”
Source: The Works: In Twenty-two Volumes. ¬The book of snobs; and Sketches and travels in London
“To know nothing, or little, is in the nature of some husbands. To hide, in the nature of how many women? Oh, ladies! how many of you have surreptitious milliners' bills? How many of you have gowns and bracelets which you daren't show, or which you wear trembling?--trembling, and coaxing with smiles the husband by your side, who does not know the new velvet gown from the old one, or the new bracelet from last year's, or has any notion that the ragged-looking yellow lace scarf cost forty guineas and that Madame Bobinot is writing dunning letters every week for the money!”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray (Illustrated)
“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.”
“I will bring order from chaos and light from darkness.”
“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.”
Source: The Confessions of Fitz-Booddle; and Some Passages in the Life of Major Gahagan
“Those we love can but walk down to the pier with us - the voyage we must make alone.”
Source: The works of William Makepeace Thackeray
