William Makepeace Thackeray - Life Quotes

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Tis hard with respect to Beauty, that its possessor should not have a life enjoyment of it, but be compelled to resign it after, at the most, some forty years lease

William Makepeace Thackeray
I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning.

William Makepeace Thackeray
An immense percentage of snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of this mortal life.

William Makepeace Thackeray
Every man ought to be in love a few times in his life, and to have a smart attack of the fever. You are better for it when it is over: the better for your misfortune, if you endure it with a manly heart; how much the better for success, if you win it and a good wife into the bargain!

William Makepeace Thackeray
Love seems to survive life, and to reach beyond it. I think we take it with us past the grave. Do we not still give it to those who have left us? May we not hope that they feel it for us, and that we shall leave it here in one or two fond bosoms, when we also are gone?

William Makepeace Thackeray
Sure, love vincit omnia; is immeasurably above all ambition, more precious than wealth, more noble than name. He knows not life who knows not that: he hath not felt the highest faculty of the soul who hath not enjoyed it.

William Makepeace Thackeray
Happiest time of youth and life, when love is first spoken and returned; when the dearest eyes are daily shining welcome, and the fondest lips never tire of whispering their sweet secrets; when the parting look that accompanies "Good night!" gives delightful warning of tomorrow.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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 lip,s though they cannot speak.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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?

William Makepeace Thackeray
As an occupation in declining years, I declare I think saving is useful, amusing and not unbecoming. It must be a perpetual amusement. It is a game that can be played by day, by night, at home and abroad, and at which you must win in the long run.... What an interest it imparts to life!.

William Makepeace Thackeray
What man's life is not overtaken by one or more of those tornadoes that send us out of the course, and fling us on rocks to shelter as best we may?

William Makepeace Thackeray
Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?

William Makepeace Thackeray
I have seen no men in life loving their profession so much as painters, except, perhaps, actors, who, when not engaged themselves, always go to the play.

William Makepeace Thackeray
Which of us that is thirty years old has not had its Pompeii? Deep under ashes lies the life of youth--the careless sport, the pleasure and the passion, the darling joy.

William Makepeace Thackeray
At certain periods of life, we live years of emotion in a few weeks, and look back on those times as on great gaps between the old life and the new.

William Makepeace Thackeray
If she did not wish to lead a virtuous life, at least she desired to enjoy a character for virtue.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
If a man has committed wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his errors out to the world than his own relations.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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
She lived in her past life — these relics and remembrances of dead affection were all that was left her in the world.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
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
There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

William Makepeace Thackeray
The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.

William Makepeace Thackeray
Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and planted it, so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing, but it may spread into a prodigious timber.

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

William Makepeace Thackeray
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.

William Makepeace Thackeray
What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise, and, possessing all these qualities, to exercise them in the most graceful outward manner? Ought a gentleman to be a loyal son, a true husband, an honest father? Ought his life to be decent, his bills to be paid, his taste to be high and elegant, his aims in life lofty and noble?

William Makepeace Thackeray
'Tis misfortune that awakens ingenuity, or fortitude, or endurance, in hearts where these qualities had never come to life but for the circumstance which gave them a being.

William Makepeace Thackeray