Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray (English Novelist)

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

I would rather make my name than inherit it.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Inheritance

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

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

People hate as they love, unreasonably.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Hatred, Hate

To be a gentleman is to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise, and possessing all those qualities to exercise them in the most graceful outward manner.
—William Makepeace Thackeray

All is vanity, look you; and so the preacher is vanity too.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Vanity

Next to excellence, comes the appreciation of it.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Motivational, Motivation, Excellence

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

Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries!—what worthy man does not keep those in mind?
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Injury

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Mothers, Mother, Mothers Day

All amusements to which virtuous women are not admitted, are, rely upon it, deleterious in their nature.
—William Makepeace Thackeray

Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Despair

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Humor

If you take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better than his neighbor?
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Temptation

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

Let a man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world yields, or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and you will succeed.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Fortune, Risk, Courage

To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Win, Love, Best

Benevolent feeling ennobles the most trifling actions.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Benevolence

The great moments of life are but moments like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes, a mere pressure of the hand, may decide it; or of the lips, though they cannot speak.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Trifles

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

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

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

A fool can no more see his own folly than he can see his ears.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Fools

It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Bitterness

When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Enjoyment

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

It’s not dying for faith that’s so hard, it’s living up to it.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Faith

Charming Alnaschar visions! It is the happy privilege of youth to construct you!
—William Makepeace Thackeray

‘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

Except for the young or very happy, I can’t say I am sorry for anyone who dies.
—William Makepeace Thackeray
Topics: Dying, Death

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