How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Britain
Novels are sweet. All people with healthy literary appetites love them—almost all women and a vast number of clever, hard-headed men.—Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians are notorious novel readers, as well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind and tender mothers.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men’s failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal’s natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle?
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Aristocracy
Come forward, some great marshal, and organize equality in society, and your rod shall swallow up all the juggling old court gold-sticks
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Equality
There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing
Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Mothers Day, Mothers, Mother
People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Conceit, Vanity
If a man character is to be abused there’s nobody like a relative to do the business.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Character
Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Despair
We may be pretty certain that persons whom all the world treats ill deserve the treatment they get. 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
Topics: Optimism, Positive Attitudes, World, Friendship, Attitude
A fool can no more see his own folly than he can see his ears.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Fools
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!
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Books, Reading
Whenever he met a great man he groveled before him, and my-lorded him as only a free-born Briton can do.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Persuasion
All amusements to which virtuous women are not admitted, are, rely upon it, deleterious in their nature.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Perhaps a gentleman is a rarer man than some of us think for. Which of us can point out many such in his circle; men whose aims are generous, whose truth is not only constant in its kind, but elevated in its degree; whose want of meanness makes them simple, who can look the world honestly in the face with an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
It seems to me one cannot sit down in that place [the Round Reading room of the British Museum] without a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table, and to have thanked Heaven for my English birthright, freely to partake of these beautiful books, and speak the truth I find there.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Libraries
Vanity is often the unseen spur.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Vanity
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
Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Appreciation, Excellence
Life is the soul’s nursery – its training place for the destinies of eternity.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Might I give counsel to any man, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and in life, that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what great men admire.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Greatness
Who feels injustice; who shrinks before a slight; who has a sense of wrong so acute, and so glowing a gratitude for kindness, as a generous boy?
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Children
Novelty has charms that our minds can hardly withstand. The most valuable things, if they have for a long while appeared among us, do not make any impression as they are good, but give us a distaste as they are old. But when the influence of this fantastical humor is over, the same men or things will come to be admired again, by a happy return of our good taste.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Parting and forgetting?—What faithful heart can do these?—Our great thoughts, our great affections, the truths of our life, never leave us.—Surely, they cannot be separate from our consciousness; will follow it whithersoever that shall go, and are, of their nature, divine and immortal.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
All is vanity, look you; and so the preacher is vanity too.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Vanity
A snob is one who is always pretending to be something better—especially richer or more fashionable than others.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Which of us that is thirty years old has not had his Pompeii? Deep under ashes lies the life of youth—the careless sport, the pleasure and passion, the darling joy.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Youth
He who forgets his own friends meanly to follow after those of a higher degree is a snob.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
It is from the level of calamities … that we learn impressive and useful lessons.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Difficulties, Adversity
Charming Alnaschar visions! It is the happy privilege of youth to construct you!
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Anthony Trollope English Novelist
George Gissing English Novelist
Jane Austen English Novelist
Samuel Richardson English Novelist
E. M. Forster English Novelist
Jeanette Winterson English Novelist
Thomas Love Peacock English Satirist
George Borrow English Writer, Traveler
Virginia Woolf English Novelist
Dinah Craik English Novelist, Poet