William Makepeace Thackeray: Trending quotes

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William Makepeace Thackeray: 138 quotes20 likes

“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.”

William Makepeace Thackeray

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

“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.”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

Vol. I, ch. 22.
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.”

William Makepeace Thackeray

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

“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.”

William Makepeace Thackeray

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

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

William Makepeace Thackeray

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

“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.””

William Makepeace Thackeray

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

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

William Makepeace Thackeray

The Mahogany Tree, 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!”

William Makepeace Thackeray

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

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

William Makepeace Thackeray

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

“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 book The Virginians

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

“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.”

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.”

William Makepeace Thackeray book The Virginians

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

“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.”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

The narrator, LXII
Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

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

William Makepeace Thackeray

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

William Makepeace Thackeray

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

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

William Makepeace Thackeray book The Virginians

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

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

William Makepeace Thackeray

Lovel the Widower (1860), Ch. 6.

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

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

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

“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.”

William Makepeace Thackeray

The End of the Play, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Here was a man who could not spell, and did not care to read — who had the habits and the cunning of a boor: whose aim in life was pettifogging: who never had a taste, or emotion, or enjoyment, but was sordid and soil; and yet he had rank, and honors, and power, somehow: and was dignitary of the land, and a pillar of the state.”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

Vol. I, ch. 9.
Vanity Fair (1847–1848)