William Makepeace Thackeray

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

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

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

“A good laugh is sunshine in the house.”

“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!”

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

“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.”

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

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