William Makepeace Thackeray

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

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.

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

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 …

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

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.

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 …

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. …

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

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

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

He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob.

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

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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, …

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