William Makepeace Thacker quotes
A good laugh is sunshine in the house.
Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.
Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you.
Except for the young or very happy, I can't say I am sorry for anyone who dies.
Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.
I never know whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.
If a man character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business.
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!
It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.
It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.
Let a man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world yields, or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and you will succeed.
Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
Next to excellence, comes the appreciation of it.
Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.
People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.
The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.
The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.
There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.
'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.
To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it - who can say this is not greatness?
To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.
What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.
When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.
Whenever he met a great man he groveled before him, and my-lorded him as only a free-born Briton can do.