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Happy! Who is happy? Was there not a serpent in Paradise itself? And if Eve had been perfectly happy beforehand, would she have listened to the tempter?

William Makepeace Thackeray

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William Makepeace Thackeray
Age: 52 †
Born: 1811
Born: July 18
Died: 1863
Died: December 24
Novelist
Prosaist
Writer
Calcutta
William Makepeace Thackeray
George Fitz-Boodle
Perfectly
Happiness
Happy
Would
Tempter
Beforehand
Serpent
Listened
Paradise

More quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray

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The best of women are hypocrites.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?-Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Kindnesses are easily forgotten but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?
William Makepeace Thackeray
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What, indeed, does not that word cheerfulness imply? It means a contented spirit, it means a pure heart, it means a kind and loving disposition it means humility and charity it means a generous appreciation of others, and a modest opinion of self.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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How do men feel whose whole lives (and many men's lives are) are lies, schemes, and subterfuges? What sort of company do they keep when they are alone? Daily in life I watch men whose every smile is an artifice, and every wink is an hypocrisy. Doth such a fellow where a mask in his own privacy, and to his own conscience?
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Ah! gracious Heaven gives us eyes to see our own wrong, however dim age may make them and knees not too stiff to kneel, in spite of years, cramp, and rheumatism.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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What will a man not do when frantic with love? To what baseness will he not demean himself? What pangs will he not make others suffer, so that he may ease his selfish heart?
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Certain it is that scandal is good brisk talk, whereas praise of one's neighbor is by no means lively hearing. An acquaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and served with mustard and cayenne pepper excites the appetite whereas a slice of cold friend with currant jelly is but a sickly, unrelishing meat.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Oh, my young friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love-business, and how undignified, sometimes, the end!
William Makepeace Thackeray
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One of the greatest of a great man's qualities is success 't is the result of all the others 't is a latent power in him which compels the favor of the gods, and subjugates fortune.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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No particular motive for living, except the custom and habit of it.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Is beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so?
William Makepeace Thackeray
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It is best to love wisely, no doubt but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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If fathers are sometimes sulky at the appearance of the destined son-in-law, is it not a fact that mothers become sentimental and, as it were, love their own loves over again.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is - A sort of soup or broth, or brew, Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, That Greenwich never could outdo Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron, Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace All these you eat at Terre's tavern, In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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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.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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What a charming reconciler and peacemaker money is!
William Makepeace Thackeray
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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 with that passion, and I believe what are called broken hearts are a very rare article indeed.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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Our great thoughts, our great affections, the truths of our life, never leave us. Surely they can not separate from our consciousness, shall follow it whithersoever that shall go, and are of their nature divine and immortal.
William Makepeace Thackeray