Top William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

William Makepeace Thackeray Biography

William Makepeace Thackeray (/ˈθækəri/; 18 July 1811 – 24 December 1863) was a British novelist and author. He is known for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.

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William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard. . . 'Tis the living up to it that's difficult.

Difficult, Dying, Faith, Hard

To be thought rich is as good as to be rich.

Good, Rich, Riches, Thought

Humor is the mistress of tears.

Humor, Mistress, Tears

Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them-almost all women; a vast number of clever, hardheaded men.

Appetites, Clever, Literary, Men, Number, Sweet

Learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly.

Admiration, Basely, Life, Meanly, Men, Spirit

Sir, Respect Your Dinner: idolize it, enjoy it properly. You will be many hours in the week, many weeks in the year, and many years in your life happier if you do.

Dinner, Happier, Idolize, Life, Week, Years

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

Compatible, Despair, Dinner, Promise

To know nothing, or little, is in the nature of some husbands. To hide, in the nature of how many women? Oh, ladies! how many of you have surreptitious milliners' bills? How many of you have gowns and bracelets which you daren't show, or which you wear trembling?--trembling, and coaxing with smiles the husband by your side, who does not know the new velvet gown from the old one, or the new bracelet from last year's, or has any notion that the ragged-looking yellow lace scarf cost forty guineas and that Madame Bobinot is writing dunning letters every week for the money!

Forty, Husband, Nature, Writing, Your Side

To our betters eve can reconcile ourselves, if you please--respecting them sincerely, laughing at their jokes, making allowance for their stupidities, meekly suffering their insolence; but we can't pardon our equals going beyond us.

Envy, Laughing, Stupidities, Stupidity, Suffering

How do men feel whose whole lives (and many men's lives are) are lies, schemes, and subterfuges? What sort of company do they keep when they are alone? Daily in life I watch men whose every smile is an artifice, and every wink is an hypocrisy. Doth such a fellow where a mask in his own privacy, and to his own conscience?

Fellow, Hypocrisy, Lying, Men, Privacy, Smile

Our great thoughts, our great affections, the truths of our life, never leave us. Surely they can not separate from our consciousness, shall follow it whithersoever that shall go, and are of their nature divine and immortal.

Affection, Divinity, Follow, Immortal, Life, Nature

Pray God, keep us simple.

God, Pray, Praying, Simple, Simplicity

He who meanly admires a mean thing is a snob--perhaps that is a safe definition of the character.

Admires, Character, Mean, Meanly, Safe, Thing

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 trameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every schoolmaster perish miserably!

Deuces, Difference, Differences, Heart, Know, Schoolmaster

I will bring order from chaos and light from darkness.

Chaos, Darkness, Light, Order

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.

Against, Believe, Hatred, Lying, Order

Certain it is that scandal is good brisk talk, whereas praise of one's neighbor is by no means lively hearing. An acquaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and served with mustard and cayenne pepper excites the appetite; whereas a slice of cold friend with currant jelly is but a sickly, unrelishing meat.

Grilled, Mean, Meat, Old Friends, Praise, Sickly

If fathers are sometimes sulky at the appearance of the destined son-in-law, is it not a fact that mothers become sentimental and, as it were, love their own loves over again.

Become, Fact, Father, Loves, Mother, Son

Choose a good disagreeable friend, if you be wise--a surly, steady, economical, rigid fellow.

Choose, Economical, Friends, Steady, Surly, Wise

What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables.

Character, Characters, Fables, Stories, Types

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William Makepeace Thackeray Biography

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