William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

Happiness can be built only on virtue, and must of necessity have truth for its foundation.

If you look after truth and goodness, beauty looks after herself.

What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found courage to say that there is none.

Morality is truth in full bloom.

Did Charity prevail, the press would prove A vehicle of virtue, truth, and love.

The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.

Love is not a higher quality than truth.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

Truth is more praiseworthy than power.

When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.

My mother's bottom line was truth to her values. It meant bringing your heart and your humanity to work.

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.

Conscience is better served by a myth.

Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good.

For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

One is not always happy when one is good; but one is always good when one is happy.

Goodness is easier to recognize than to define.

It is better to will the good than to know the truth.

The way to choose happiness is to follow what is right and real and the truth for you.

Christianity knows no truth which is not the child of love and the parent of duty.

One's sanctions for truth and goodness are established largely by individual preferences.

While falling in love is fun, it's not everything, and it's not the antidote to an unfulfilled life, despite what Reese Witherspoon movies may tell you.

Happiness and Virtue clasp hands and walk together.

It's better to be a good person than a famous person.