Life Quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray

Life is the soul's nursery.

— William Makepeace Thackeray

Life without laughing is a dreary blank.

— William Makepeace Thackeray

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

— William Makepeace Thackeray

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

— William Makepeace Thackeray

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

— 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

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

— William Makepeace Thackeray

No particular motive for living, except the custom and habit of it.

— William Makepeace Thackeray

Life is soul's nursery- its training place for the destinies of eternity.

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

It is from the level of calamities, not that of every-day life, that we learn impressive and useful lessons.

— 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…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

There is a certain sort of man whose doom in the world is disappointment, who excels in it, and whose luckless triumphs…

— 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…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

If love lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

“No, you are not worthy of the love which I have devoted to you. I knew all along that the prize I…

— 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.…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

She lived in her past life — every letter seemed to recall some circumstance of it. How well she remembered them all!…

— 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,…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

“As his hero and heroine pass the matrimonial barrier, the novelist generally drops the curtain, as if the drama were over then:…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

When [men] see a pretty woman, and feel the delicious madness of love coming over them, they always stop to calculate her…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

“Suppose you are particularly rich and well-to-do, and say on that last day, 'I am very rich; I am tolerably well known;…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

“Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have passed before him--his early hopeful struggles, his manly successes and prosperity,…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

“Vanity Fair--Vanity Fair! Here was a man, who could not spell, and did not care to read--who had the habits and the…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

Tis hard with respect to Beauty, that its possessor should not have a life enjoyment of it, but be compelled to resign…

— 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

Learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things; narrow…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

Sir, Respect Your Dinner: idolize it, enjoy it properly. You will be many hours in the week, many weeks in the year,…

— 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,…

— 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…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

There is no good in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else. The true pleasure of…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

Hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be offended.

— William Makepeace Thackeray

If dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am I lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed…

— William Makepeace Thackeray

“Every man, however brief or inglorious may have been his academical career, must remember with kindness and tenderness the old university comrades…

— William Makepeace Thackeray