William Makepeace Thackeray

"Bees that hae honey in their mouths, hae stings in their tales."

"The thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair […,] it stings me now as I write."

"He had many fine qualities, no guile or malice against any mortal; a big mass of a soul, but not strong in proportion; a beautiful vein of genius lay struggling about in him. Nobody in our day wrote, I should say, with such perfection of style. I predict of his books very much as you do. Poor Thackeray!—adieu! adieu!"

"Thackeray is everybody's past — is everybody's youth. Forgotten friends flit about the passages of dreamy colleges and unremembered clubs; we hear fragments of unfinished conversations, we see faces without names for an instant, fixed forever in some trivial grimace: we smell the strong smell of social cliques now quite incongruous to us; and there stir in all the little rooms at once the hundred ghosts of oneself."

"Thackeray's Philip, which I thought excellent, an exquisite combination of pathos and irony and genuine comedy. He is worlds beyond Dickens in the power of direct and accurate observation."

"(“Chip Delany says that science fiction is as much a way of "reading" as it is a way of writing, and learn that. What is it that we have to learn?”) That's true for realism, too. You have to learn how to read Jane Austen. We have to learn how to read realistic fiction. A lot of people never do. Some of them, our fantasy readers, don't know how to read Thackeray, or any novels. They don't know what to expect, they don't know what the rewards are supposed to be."

"Over and outside his fancy, which was the gift which made him so remarkable,—a certain feminine softness was the most remarkable trait about him. To give some immediate pleasure was the great delight of his life,—a sovereign to a schoolboy, gloves to a girl, a dinner to a man, a compliment to a woman. His charity was overflowing. His generosity excessive... Such is my idea of the man whom many call a cynic, but whom I regard as one of the most soft-hearted of human beings, sweet as Charity itself, who went about the world dropping pearls, doing good, and never wilfully inflicting a wound."

"Profoundly grateful, and as if I had swallowed a small baby. … Why, they are perfect beasts of oysters!"

"She looks so haughty that I should have thought her a princess at the very least, with a pedigree reaching as far back as the Deluge. But this lady was no better born than many other ladies who give themselves airs; and all sensible people laughed at her absurd pretensions."

"Except for the young or very happy, I can't say I am sorry for any one who dies."

"I should like to see before I die, and think of it daily more and more, the commencement of Jesus Christ's christianism in the world, where I am sure people may be made a hundred times happier than by its present forms, Judaism, ascenticism, Bullarism."

"A lady who sets her heart upon a lad in uniform must prepare to change lovers pretty quickly, or her life will be but a sad one."

"The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward."

"Let the man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim. Attacking is his only secret. Dare, and the world always yields: or, if it beat you sometimes, dare again, and it will succumb."

"Good humour may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society."

"I set it down as a maxim that it is good for a man to live where he can meet his betters, intellectual and social."

"Let us be very gentle with our neighbours' failings; and forgive our friends their debts, as we hope ourselves to be forgiven."

"When I say I know women, I mean I know that I don't know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as I have no doubt she is to herself."

"Stupid people, people who do not know how to laugh, are always pompous and self-conceited."

"Time passes—Time the consoler—Time the anodyne—Time the grey calm satirist, whose sad smile seems to say, Look, O man, at the vanity of the objects you pursue, and of yourself who pursue them!"

"Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders."

"He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob."

"It is impossible, in our condition of society, not to be sometimes a Snob."

"If you will fling yourself under the wheels, will go over you, depend upon it."

"That which we call a Snob, by any other name would still be Snobbish."

"Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life of the time; of the manners, the movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of society—the old times live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?"

"Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things: narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly."

"I suppose as long as novels last and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero, a wicked monster his opposite, and a pretty girl who finds a champion; bravery and virtue conquer beauty: and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him and honest folks come by their own."

"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. One suspects the genuineness of the tear, the naturalness of the humour."

"There is no man that teaches us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison."

"Humour is the mistress of tears; she knows the way to the fons lachrymarum, strikes in dry and rugged places with her enchanting wand, and bids the fountain gush and sparkle. She has refreshed myriads more from her natural springs, than ever tragedy has watered from her pompous old urn."

"Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little"

"It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't: and are proud of our impotence, too."

"Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire hopeless passion is my destiny."

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

"Of the Corporation of the Goosequill — of the Press, my boy, … of the fourth estate … There she is — the great engine — she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world — her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous."

"Although I enter not, Yet round about the spot Ofttimes I hover, And near the sacred gate, With longing eyes I wait, Expectant of her."

"As the gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best."

"If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!"

"How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!"

"We see flowers of good blooming in foul places."

"'Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard, Master Harry — every man of every nation has done that — 'tis the living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my cost."

"'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel."

"There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write."

"If there is a verity in wine, according to the old adage, what an amiable-natured character Dick's must have been! In proportion as he took in wine he overflowed with kindness."

"I think Steele shone rather than sparkled."

"Dick never thought that his bottle companion was a butt to aim at—only a friend to shake by the hand."

"We love being in love, that's the truth on't."

"Sure, love vincit omnia; is immeasurably above all ambition, more precious than wealth, more noble than name. He knows not life who knows not that: he hath not felt the highest faculty of the soul who hath not enjoyed it."

"What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables."