William Makepeace Thackeray

This a noble dish is— A sort of soup or broth, or brew, Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, That Greenwich never could outdo.

People hate, as they love, unreasonably.

If love lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of spirit burns brightly; and if we die deplores us forever and loves still equally; and exists with …

Young ladies may have been crossed in love, and have had their sufferings, their frantic moments of grief and tears, their wakeful nights, and so forth; but it is only in very sentimental novels that people occupy themselves perpetually …

To be beautiful is enough. If a woman can do that well, who shall demand more from her? You don't want a rose to sing.

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?

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.

The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.

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

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.

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

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

I think Steele shone rather than sparkled.

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.

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

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

'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.

We see flowers of good blooming in foul places.

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

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!

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

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.

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 …

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