William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) was a great Victorian novelist whose central literary theme was the expansion of human sympathy.
Born in Calcutta, British India, as the only son of a distinguished member of the India civil service, Thackeray was brought up in luxury reminiscent of a young prince. He was sent to England for his schooling at age five. He attended Cambridge, but left without graduating, after losing some of his inheritance through gambling and business failure. His Indian upbringing and his public school experience feature prominently in The Newcomes (1853–55.)
In 1848, after a long and often disappointing exploration for a profession and a literary voice, Thackeray’s definite breakthrough came with his serialized novel, Vanity Fair (1847–48.) This classic novel about the rise and fall of an Irish adventurer, set at the time of Waterloo and its aftermath, was a satire of the English upper-middle class of early 19th-century society.
Thackeray spent his last decade as a literary celebrity and the editor of the Cornhill magazine.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by William Makepeace Thackeray
It’s not dying for faith that’s so hard, it’s living up to it.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Faith
It is from the level of calamities … that we learn impressive and useful lessons.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Adversity, Difficulties
Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Humor
The acknowledgment of weakness which we make in imploring to be relieved from hunger and from temptation, is surely wisely put in our prayer. Think of it, you who are rich, and take heed how you turn a beggar away.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Dependence is a perpetual call upon humanity, and a greater incitement to tenderness and pity than any other motive whatever.
—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
Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Mother, Mothers, Mothers Day
People hate as they love, unreasonably.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Hate, Hatred
I would rather make my name than inherit it.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Inheritance
You who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your calling, are a snob; as are you who boast of your pedigree, or are proud of your wealth.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Pride
Except for the young or very happy, I can’t say I am sorry for anyone who dies.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Death, Dying
The world is good-natured to people who are good-natured.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Goodness
It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Bitterness
Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Youth, Childhood
People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Conceit, Vanity
Benevolent feeling ennobles the most trifling actions.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Benevolence
They sicken of the calm that know the storm.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Attitude
It is an old saying that we forget nothing.—As people in fever begin suddenly to talk the language of their infancy, so we are stricken by memory sometimes, and old affections rush back on us as vivid as in the time when they were our daily talk, when their presence gladdened our eyes, when their accents thrilled in our cars,—when, with passionate tears and grief, we flung ourselves upon their hopeless corpses. Parting is death,—at least, as far as this life is concerned. A passion comes to an end; it is carried off in a coffin, or, weeping in a post-chaise; it drops out of life one way or another, and the earth-clods close over it, and we see it no more. But it has been part of our souls, and it is eternal.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Memory
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: Reading, Books
Vanity is often the unseen spur.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Vanity
All men who avoid female society have dull perceptions and are stupid, or else have gross tastes, and revolt against what is pure.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Woman
I never know whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
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
A man only begins to know women as he grows old; and for my part, my idea of their cleverness rises every day.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Woman
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
The affection of young ladies is of as rapid growth as Jack’s beanstalk, and reaches up to the sky in a night.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Affection
Bravery never goes out of style.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Brave, Courage
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: Writing, Authors & Writing
Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries!—what worthy man does not keep those in mind?
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Injury
Next to excellence, comes the appreciation of it.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Excellence, Motivation, Motivational
And lo! in a flash of crimson splendor, with blazing, scarlet clouds running before his chariot and heralding his majestic approach, God’s sun rises upon the world.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Love, Best, Win
‘Tis not the dying for a faith that’s so hard… ‘Tis the living up to it that’s difficult.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Faith
We who have lived before railways were made belong to another world. It was only yesterday, but what a gulf between now and then! Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth—all these belong to the old period. But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Britain
Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Despair
All is vanity, look you; and so the preacher is vanity too.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Vanity
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: Attitude, Positive Attitudes, World, Optimism, Friendship
All amusements to which virtuous women are not admitted, are, rely upon it, deleterious in their nature.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
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
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