William Makepeace Thackeray

Follow your honest convictions and be strong.

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.

When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

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

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!

Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.

It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.

An evil person is like a dirty window, they never let the light shine through.

People hate as they love, unreasonably.

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

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

It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is forever in a passion.

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

Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

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.

When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.

I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.

I would rather make my name than inherit it.