Wit & Attitude Quote by William Makepeace Thackeray

Thackeray smuggles a dare into a piece of advice. He nods to prudence ("love wisely, no doubt") the way a Victorian novelist is expected to: with a quick, dutiful bow to self-control, good judgment, and all the moral bookkeeping of the era. Then he flips the hierarchy. "But" is the trapdoor. Suddenly the risk, the embarrassment, the miscalculation that polite society warns you against becomes not merely excusable but preferable to the real catastrophe: emotional incapacity.

The line works because it treats foolishness as a kind of proof-of-life. "Love wisely" is love under supervision, love that stays legible to social rules and future consequences. Thackeray's "love foolishly" is messier and therefore more human; it implies appetite, vulnerability, and the willingness to look ridiculous. Underneath is a quiet contempt for the Victorian obsession with restraint as virtue. He suggests that the culture's fear of impropriety can harden into something worse than heartbreak: a protected life that never actually enters the arena.

Contextually, this sits comfortably in Thackeray's world of polished hypocrisies, where respectability often masks calculation. He isn't romanticizing bad choices so much as reminding readers that over-management can become its own vice. The real warning isn't "don't be careful". It's that the pursuit of being correct can cost you the capacity to feel. Better the bruises of attachment than the sterile triumph of never needing anyone.