William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

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I can't help always falling upon it, and cry out with particular loudness and wailing, and become especially melancholy, when I see a dead love tied to a live love.

William Makepeace Thackeray (The Virginians, 1857 - 1859)

Love is immeasurably above all ambition, more precious than wealth, more noble than name. He knows not life who knows not that: he hath not felt the highest faculty of the soul who hath not enjoyed it.

William Makepeace Thackeray (The History of Henry Esmond, 1852)

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; and so let all young persons take their choice.

William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair, 1848)

Love seems to survive life, and to reach beyond it. I think we take it with us past the grave. Do we not still give it to those who have left us? May we not hope that they feel it for us, and that we shall leave it here in one or two fond bosoms, when we also are gone?

William Makepeace Thackeray (The Virginians, 1857 - 1859)

Oh, Vanity of vanities!
How wayward the decrees of Fate are;
How very weak the very wise,
How very small the very great are!

William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanitas Vanitatum)

The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward.

William Makepeace Thackeray (The Luck of Barry Lyndon, 1844)

Tis misfortune that awakens ingenuity, or fortitude, or endurance, in hearts where these qualities had never come to life but for the circumstance which gave them a being.

William Makepeace Thackeray (The History of Henry Esmond, 1852)

Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?

William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair, 1848)

There is no good ... in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else.... The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.

William Makepeace Thackeray (The Newcomes, 1855)

Happiest time of youth and life, when love is first spoken and returned; when the dearest eyes are daily shining welcome, and the fondest lips never tire of whispering their sweet secrets; when the parting look that accompanies "Good night!" gives delightful warning of tomorrow.

William Makepeace Thackeray (The Virginians, 1857 - 1859)

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 (The Virginians, 1857 - 1859)

So they pass away: friends, kindred, the dearest-loved, grown people, aged, infants. As we go on the down-hill journey, the mile-stones are grave-stones, and on each more and more names are written; unless haply you live beyond man's common age, when friends have dropped off, and, tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you reach the terminus alone.

William Makepeace Thackeray (Roundabout Papers, 1861)

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish. Alas, the heart hardens as the blood ceases to run. The cold snow strikes down from the head, and checks the glow of feeling. Who wants to survive into old age after abdicating all his faculties one by one, and be sans teeth, sans eyes, sans memory, sans hope, sans sympathy?

William Makepeace Thackeray (The Virginians, 1857 - 1859)

Forgotten tones of love recur to us, and kind glances shine out of the past - oh so bright and clear! - oh so longed after! - because they are out of reach; as holiday music from within a prison wall - or sunshine seen through the bars; more prized because unattainable - more bright because of the contrast of present darkness and solitude, whence there is no escape.

William Makepeace Thackeray (The History of Henry Esmond, 1852)

Only to two or three persons in all the world are the reminiscences of a man's early youth interesting: to the parent who nursed him; to the fond wife or child mayhap afterwards who loves him; to himself always and supremely--whatever may be his actual prosperity or ill fortune, his present age, illness, difficulties, renown, or disappointments--the dawn of his life still shines brightly for him, the early griefs and delights and attachments remain with him ever faithful and dear.

William Makepeace Thackeray (The Newcomes, 1855)

Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbours, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches! It is the study of nature, surely, that provits us, and not of these imitations of her. A man, as a man, from a dustman up to Aeschylus, is God's work, and good to read, as all works of Nature are: but the silly animal is never content; is ever trying to fit itself into another shape; wants to deny its own identity, and has not the courage to utter its own thoughts.

William Makepeace Thackeray (The Paris Sketch Book, 1840s)

Those who departed loving you, love you still; and you love them always. They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true; they are only gone into the next room; and you will presently get up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you will be no more seen.

William Makepeace Thackeray (Roundabout Papers, 1861)

To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; and to forgo even ambition when the end is gained — who can say this is not greatness?

William Makepeace Thackeray (The Virginians, 1857 - 1859)

The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the destinies of mankind is pleased so to humiliate and cast down the tender, good, and wise; and to set up the selfish, the foolish, or the wicked. Oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire.

William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair, 1848)

If love lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of spirit burns brightly; and, if we die, deplores us for ever, and loves still equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the faithful bosom--whence it passes with the pure soul, beyond death; surely it shall be immortal!

William Makepeace Thackeray (The Newcomes, 1855)

Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling when a day of our life comes and we say, "Tomorrow, success or failure won't matter much: and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.

William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair, 1848)

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William Makepeace Thackeray Bio

Born: July 18, 1811
Died: December 24, 1863

William Makepeace Thackeray was an English victorian novelist and writer. He is best known for his satirical novels, most notably "Vanity Fair".

Notable Works

The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844)
Vanity Fair
(1848)
Pendennis
(1848 - 1850)
The History of Henry Esmond
(1852)