Inspirational William Thackeray Quotes

"A good laugh is sunshine in the house."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"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."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Follow your honest convictions and be strong."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Next to excellence is the appreciation of it."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

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

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Bravery never goes out of fashion."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"I would rather make my name than inherit it."

- 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

"Never lose a chance of saying a kind word."

- 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

"It is the ordinary lot of people to have no friends if they themselves care for nobody."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"The little cares, fears, tears, timid misgivings, sleepless fancies of I don't know how many days and nights, were forgotten under one moment's influence of that familiar, irresistible smile."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"You must not judge hastily or vulgarly of snobs: to do so shows that you are yourself a snob."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Make new things familiar and familiar things new."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?"

- 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

"Cheerfulness means a contented spirit, a pure heart, a kind and loving disposition; it means humility and charity, a generous appreciation of others, and a modest opinion of self."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Long brooding over those lost pleasures exaggerates their charm and sweetness."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"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

"To be a gentleman is to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise, and possessing all those qualities to exercise them in the most graceful outward manner."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"It's not dying for faith that's so hard, it's living up to it."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

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

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"We see flowers of good blooming in foul places."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

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

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Love is master of the wisest. It is only fools who defy him."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"When a man is in love with one woman in a family, it is astonishing how fond he becomes of every person connected with it."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Love is immeasurably above all ambition, more precious than wealth, more noble than name."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"This 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

"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

"Forgotten tones of love recur to us, and kind glances shine out of the past - oh so bright and clear! - oh so longed after! - because they are out of reach; as holiday music from within a prison wall - or sunshine seen through the bars; more prized because unattainable - more bright because of the contrast of present darkness and solitude, whence there is no escape."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches!"

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Those who departed loving you, love you still; and you love them always. They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true; they are only gone into the next room."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Kindness is very indigestible. It disagrees with very proud stomachs."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"A woman may possess the wisdom and chastity of Minerva, and we give no heed to her, if she has a plain face. What folly will not a pair of bright eyes make pardonable? What dullness may not red lips are sweet accents render pleasant? And so, with their usual sense of justice, ladies argue that because a woman is handsome, therefore she is a fool. O ladies, ladies! there are some of you who are neither handsome nor wise. "

- William Makepeace Thackeray

What love, what truth, what beauty, what happiness, for all, what generous kindness for you and me, are here spread out!

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"Love makes fools of us all, big and little."

- William Makepeace Thackeray

"True love is better than glory. "

- William Makepeace Thackeray

“When one fib becomes due as it were, you must forge another to take up the old acceptance; and so the stock of your lies in circulation inevitably multiplies, and the danger of detection increases every day.” 

- William Makepeace Thackeray