James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Thackeray
A good laugh is sunshine in a house.
Adversity is a great schoolmistress, as many a poor fellow knows that has whimpered over his lesson before her awful chair.
Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of a rat-tat.
Could you see every man’s career in life, you would find a woman clogging him … or cheering him and goading him.
Every one of us believes in his heart, or would like to have others believe, that he is something which he is not.
Every person who manages another is a hypocrite.
Good-humour may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.
Great lies are as great as great truths, and prevail constantly and day after day.
Humour is the mistress of tears.
I never knew a man of letters ashamed of his profession.
I think women have an instinct of dissimulation; they know by nature how to disguise their emotions far better than the most consummate male courtiers can do.
I would rather make my name than inherit it.
If fun is good, truth is still better, and love most of all.
If we love those we lose, can we altogether lose those we love?
Indignant good sense is often the perfection of absurdity.
Life without laughing is a dreary blank.
Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.
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.
People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.
The affections of young ladies is of as rapid growth as Jack’s beanstalk, and reaches up to the sky in a night.
The great moments of life are but moments like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes, a mere pressure of the hand, may decide it; or of the lips, though they cannot speak.
The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.
The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion.
We all know a hundred whose coats are well made, and a score who have excellent manners; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little scrap of paper and each make out his list.
We may be pretty certain that persons whom all the world treats ill deserve entirely the treatment they get.
When a gentleman is cudgelling his brain to find any rhyme for sorrow besides “borrow” or “to-morrow,” his woes are nearer at an end than he thinks.
When a man is in love with one woman in a family, it is astonishing how fond he becomes of every person connected with it.
Who feels injustice, who shrinks before a slight, who has a sense of wrong so acute, and so glowing a gratitude for kindness, as a generous boy?
Woman’s heart is just like a lithographer’s stone—what is once written upon it cannot be rubbed out.
Women know by nature how to disguise their emotions far better than the most consummate male courtiers can do.
You can’t order remembrance out of a man’s mind.
You who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your calling, are a snob; as are you who boast of your pedigree, or are proud of your wealth.
You who forget your friends, meanly to follow after those of a higher degree, are a snob.