Top 200 William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Successful people aren’t born that way. They become successful by establishing the habit of doing things unsuccessful people don’t like to do. The successful people don’t always like these things themselves; they just get on and do them.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

2. “To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

3. “Dare and the world always yields; or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and it will succumb.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

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

— William Makepeace Thackeray

5. “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

6. “I will bring order from chaos and light from darkness.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

7. “Love makes fools of us all, big and little.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

8. “The world is good natured to people who are good natured.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

9. “Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

10. “Business first; pleasure afterwards.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

11. “A good laugh is sunshine in the house.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

12. “A cheerful look brings joy to the heart.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

13. “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

14. “Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

15. “There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

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

— William Makepeace Thackeray

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

— William Makepeace Thackeray

18. “A good woman is the loveliest flower that blooms under heaven; and we look with love and wonder upon its silent grace, its pure fragrance, its delicate bloom of beauty.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

19. “The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

20. “Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

21. “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

22. “Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

23. “If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick and easy ruin is.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

24. “He that has ears to hear, let him stuff them with cotton.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

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

— William Makepeace Thackeray

26. “Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

27. “Pray, dear madam, another glass; it is Christmas time, it will do you no harm.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

28. “Bravery never goes out of fashion.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

29. “To see a young couple loving each other is no wonder; but to see an old couple loving each other is the best sight of all.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

30. “What is a gentleman? It is to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise; and possessed of all these qualities to exercise them in the most graceful manner.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

31. “The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

32. “Pray God, keep us simple.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

33. “We are most of us very lonely in this world; you who have any who love you, cling to them and thank God.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

34. “An evil person is like a dirty window, they never let the light shine through.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

35. “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

36. “Time passes, Time the consoler, Time the anodyne.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

37. “Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

38. “Under the magnetism of friendship the modest man becomes bold; the shy, confident; the lazy, active; and the impetuous, prudent and peaceful.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

39. “Humor is the mistress of tears.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

40. “As fits the holy Christmas birth, Be this, good friends, our carol still Be peace on earth, be peace on earth, To men of gentle will.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

41. “Malice is of the boomerang character, and is apt to turn upon the projector.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

42. “I would rather make my name than inherit it.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

43. “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

44. “There is no good in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else. The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

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

— William Makepeace Thackeray

46. “That which we call a snob by any other name would still be snobbish.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

47. “You must not judge hastily or vulgarly of Snobs: to do so shows that you are yourself a Snob.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

48. “We love being in love, that’s the truth on’t.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

49. “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

50. “Except for the young or very happy, I can’t say I am sorry for anyone who dies.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray