Top 200 William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “We can’t all be lions in this world. There must be some lambs, harmless, kindly, gregarious creatures for eating and shearing.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

202. “What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy’s tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

203. “Ah! gracious Heaven gives us eyes to see our own wrong, however dim age may make them; and knees not too stiff to kneel, in spite of years, cramp, and rheumatism.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

204. “The ladies – Heaven bless them! – are, as a general rule, coquettes from babyhood upwards.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

205. “Praise everybody, I say to such: never be squeamish, but speak out your compliment both point-blank in a man’s face, and behind his back, when you know there is a reasonable chance of his hearing it again. 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 popped it in; so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing; but it may sprout into a prodigious bit of timber.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

206. “The great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

207. “It is comparatively easy to leave a mistress, but very hard to be left by one.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

208. “We have only to change the point of view and the greatest action looks mean.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

209. “All the world used her ill, said this young misanthropist,... and we may be pretty certain that persons whom all the world treats ill, deserve entirely the treatment they get. 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

210. “It is all very well for you, who have probably never seen any spiritual manifestations, to talk as you do; but if you had seen what I have witnessed you would hold a different opinion.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

211. “That acknowledgment of weakness which we make in imploring to be relieved from hunger and from temptation is surely wisely put in our daily prayer. Think of it, you who are rich, and take heed how you turn a beggar away.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

212. “All amusements to which virtuous women are not admitted, are, rely upon it, deleterious in their nature.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

213. “Taste is something quite different from fashion, superior to fashion.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

214. “Is beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so?”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

215. “There is no man that can teach us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

216. “I want a sofa, as I want a friend, upon which I can repose familiarly. If you can’t have intimate terms and freedom with one and the other, they are of no good.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

217. “If dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am I lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

218. “Almost all women have hearts full of pity.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

219. “At that comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain we had a bouillabaisse than which a better was never eaten at Marseilles; and not the least headache in the morning, I give you my word; on the contrary, you only wake with a sweet refreshing thirst for claret and water.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

220. “One of the greatest of a great man’s qualities is success; ’t is the result of all the others; ’t is a latent power in him which compels the favor of the gods, and subjugates fortune.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

221. “When a mother, as fond mothers will; vows that she knows every thought in her daughter’s heart, I think she pretends to know a great deal too much.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

222. “Who does not believe his first passion eternal?”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

223. “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

224. “The world is full of love and pity, I say. Had there been less suffering, there would have been less kindness.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

225. “As if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than the man who blacks my boots.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

226. “For my part, I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man’s moral senses, – the very easiest to be deadened when wakened, and in some never wakened at all.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

227. “Those who forgets their friends to follow those of a higher status are truly snobs.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

228. “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

229. “Here is a minute. It may be my love is dead, but here is a minute to kneel over the grave and pray by it.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

230. “Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

231. “Picture to yourself, O fair young reader, a worldly, selfish, graceless, thankless, religionless old woman, writhing in pain and fear, and without her wig. Picture her to yourself, and ere you be old, learn to love and pray.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

232. “Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

233. “She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slip-shod and in curl-papers, all day.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

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

— William Makepeace Thackeray

235. “Not only is the world informed of everything about you, but of a great deal more.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

236. “All is vanity, look you; and so the preacher is vanity too.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

237. “We pass by common objects or persons without noticing them; but the keen eye detects and notes types everywhere and among all classes.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

238. “If I mayn’t tell you what I feel, what is the use of a friend?”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

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

— William Makepeace Thackeray

240. “You can’t order remembrance out of the mind; and a wrong that was a wrong yesterday must be a wrong to-morrow.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

241. “I can’t help always falling upon it, and cry out with particular loudness and wailing, and become especially melancholy, when I see a dead love tied to a live love.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

242. “They talked about each others’ houses, and characters, and families – just as the Joneses do about the Smiths.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

243. “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

244. “If you take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better than his neighbor?”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

245. “Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned have a great tenderness and pity for the poor folks who are not endowed with the prodigious talents which we have.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

246. “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

247. “Time has dealt kindly with that stout officer, as it does ordinarily with men who have good stomachs and good tempers, and are not perplexed over much by fatigue of the brain.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

248. “It is those who injure women who get the most kindness from them.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

249. “It is in the nature and instinct of some women. Some are made to scheme, and some to love; and I wish any respected bachelor that reads this may take the sort that best likes him.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray