William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

“Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.”

Source: Vanity Fair

“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 book The Luck of Barry Lyndon

The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844).

“… the greatest tyrants over women are women.”

“There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.”

Source: Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray book The History of Henry Esmond

Bk. II, ch. 1.
The History of Henry Esmond (1852)
Source: The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.

“The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.”

“People hate as they love, unreasonably.”

Source: Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes about love

“Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little”

“But oh, Mesdames, if you are not allowed to touch the heart sometimes in spite of syntax, and are not to be loved until you all know the difference between trimeter and tetrameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every schoolmaster perish miserably!”

Source: The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 4.

“It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.”

Vol. I, ch. 12.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

“Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.”

Source: The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 6.
Context: It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't: and are proud of our impotence, too.

“As the gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best.”

Vol. I, ch. 13.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

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

Source: The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 40.

William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes about the world

“Ah! Vanitas vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied? — Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.”

Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out. Vol. II, ch. 27.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

“I should like to see before I die, and think of it daily more and more, the commencement of Jesus Christ's christianism in the world, where I am sure people may be made a hundred times happier than by its present forms, Judaism, ascenticism, Bullarism.”

Vol. II, ch. 27.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

“Dare, and the world always yields: or, if it beat you sometimes, dare again, and it will succumb.”

Thackeray, William Makepeace. Nov. 1840, A Collection of Letters (1887). Ardent Media. p. 36.

William Makepeace Thackeray book The Luck of Barry Lyndon

The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844), Ch. 13.
Context: Let the man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim. Attacking is his only secret. Dare, and the world always yields: or, if it beat you sometimes, dare again, and it will succumb.

“The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.”

“Of the Corporation of the Goosequill — of the Press, my boy, … of the fourth estate … There she is — the great engine — she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world — her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous.”

Vol. I, ch. 2.
Vanity Fair (1847–1848)
Context: 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.

“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”

Source: The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 30.

William Makepeace Thackeray: Trending quotes

“it is the ordinary lot of people to have no friends if they themselves care for nobody”

Vol. II, ch. 2.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

“Remember, it's as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.”

Source: Vanity Fair

“This I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without a positive hump, may marry whom she likes.”

Source: The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 28.

William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

“A lady who sets her heart upon a lad in uniform must prepare to change lovers pretty quickly, or her life will be but a sad one.”

Vol. I, ch. 4. Compare: "I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of", Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast Table; "The whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women", Bernard Shaw, Epistle Dedicatory to Man and Superman.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

“Stupid people, people who do not know how to laugh, are always pompous and self-conceited.”

Source: The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. written by himself

“What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.”

Sketches and Travels in London; Mr. Brown's Letters to His Nephew: "On Love, Marriage, Men and Women" (1856).

William Makepeace Thackeray book The Newcomes

The Newcomes, Ch. 16.

“Women like not only to conquer, but to be conquered.”

“How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!”

Source: The Virginians (1857-1859), Ch. 4.

William Makepeace Thackeray book Pendennis

Pendennis. Book ii. Chap. xxxi, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Good humour may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.”

“Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.”

Sketches and Travels in London; Mr. Brown's Letters to his Nephew: "On Tailoring — And Toilettes in General" (1856).
Source: Sketches and Travels, Etc.

“If a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relation to do the business.”

Source: Vanity Fair

“All is vanity, nothing is fair.”

Vol. I, ch. 19.
Source: Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

“Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?”

Source: Vanity Fair

“In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.”

Source: Vanity Fair

“The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?”

Source: Vanity Fair

“A good laugh is sunshine in a house”

The Newcomes, Ch. 20.
Source: Vanity Fair

“Bravery never goes out of fashion.”

Variant: A good laugh is a sunshine in a house.

“A person can't help their birth.”

"George II".
Four Georges (1860-1861)
Source: Four Georges and the English Humourists

“I would rather make my name then inherit it.”

Source: Vanity Fair

“One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object, in order, as we said, to be consistent.”

“Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.”

Source: Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray book The History of Henry Esmond

Bk. I, ch. 7.
The History of Henry Esmond (1852)

“She looks so haughty that I should have thought her a princess at the very least, with a pedigree reaching as far back as the Deluge. But this lady was no better born than many other ladies who give themselves airs; and all sensible people laughed at her absurd pretensions.”

“The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.”

The Rose and the Ring http://www.gutenberg.org/files/897/897-h/897-h.htm#2H_4_0004 (1855), Ch. 2.

“This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is —
A sort of soup or broth, or brew,
Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes,
That Greenwich never could outdo.”

The Newcomes http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/newcm10.txt (1853-1855), Ch. 9.

“Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt; how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds.”

Ballads http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/8bwmt10.txt, The Ballad of Bouillabaisse, st. 2 (1855).

“Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin
That never has known the barber’s shear,
All your wish is woman to win,
This is the way that boys begin.
Wait till you come to Forty Year.”

Vol. I, ch. 22.
Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

“Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire hopeless passion is my destiny.”

The Age of Wisdom, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Then sing as Martin Luther sang,
As Doctor Martin Luther sang,
“Who loves not wine, woman and song,
He is a fool his whole life long.””

Source: The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 23.

“Christmas is here:
Winds whistle shrill,
Icy and chill.
Little care we;
Little we fear
Weather without,
Sheltered about
The Mahogany Tree.”

A Credo, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“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!”

The Mahogany Tree, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“It is to the middle class we must look for the safety of England.”

Source: The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 42.

“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?”

"George III".
Four Georges (1860-1861)

“Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard, Master Harry — every man of every nation has done that — 'tis the living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my cost.”

Source: The Virginians (1857-1859), Ch. 92.

William Makepeace Thackeray book The History of Henry Esmond

Bk. I, ch. 6.
The History of Henry Esmond (1852)

“Next to the very young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.”

“And as every one of their dear sex is the rival of the rest of her kind, timidity passes for folly in their charitable judgements; and gentleness for dullness; and silence -- which is but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling folks, and tacit protestantism -- above all, finds no mercy at the hands of the female Inquisition.”

Source: The Virginians (1857-1859), Ch. 61.

“Except for the young or very happy, I can't say I am sorry for any one who dies.”

The narrator, LXII
Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

“The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.”

Letter to Mrs. Bryan Waller Procter (26 November 1856), from The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Edgar F. Harden [Garland Publishing, Inc., 1994, ISBN 9780824036461], vol. 1, p. 763.

“The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is for ever in a passion.”

In this work are exhibited in a very high degree the two most engaging powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new. ~ Samuel Johnson, "The Life of Alexander Pope" from Lives of the English Poets (1781) http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/lvpc10.txt <br class="br">Misattributed

“Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.”

Source: The Virginians (1857-1859), Ch. 4.

“I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year.”

Lovel the Widower (1860), Ch. 6.

“The play is done; the curtain drops,
Slow falling to the prompter’s bell
A moment yet the actor stops
And looks around to say farewell.
It is an irksome word and task:
And when he’s laughed and said his say
He shows, as he removes the mask,
A face that’s anything but gay.”

Vol. II, ch. 6.
Vanity Fair (1847–1848)