William Makepeace Thackeray

“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.”

“In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.”

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

“A good laugh is sunshine in the house.”

“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.”

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

“Money has only a different value in the eyes of each.”

“His Scotch bear-leader, Mr Boswell, was a butt of the first quality.”

“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”

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

“There's a great power of imagination about these little creatures, and a creative fancy and belief that is very curious to watch . . . I am sure that horrid matter-of-fact child-rearers . . . do away with the child's most beautiful privilege. I am determined that Anny shall have a very extensive and instructive store of learning in Tom Thumbs, Jack-the-Giant-Killers, etc.”

“To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.”

“Who has not remarked the readiness with which the closest of friends and honestest of men suspect and accuse each other of cheating when they fall out on money matters? Everybody does it. Everybody is right, I suppose, and the world is a rogue.”

“I have long gone about with a conviction on my mind that I had a work to do—a Work, if you like, with a great W; a Purpose to fulfil; ... a Great Social Evil to Discover and to Remedy.”

“Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.”

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

“It is those who injure women who get the most kindness from them.”

“Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”

“I would rather make my name than inherit it.”

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