William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray (18 July 1811 – 24 December 1863) was an English Victorian writer.

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?

Quotes

• Profoundly grateful, and as if I had swallowed a small baby. … Why, they are perfect beasts of oysters!
  • Thackeray's reply when asked how he felt upon eating an unusually large American oyster during his first visit to the United States (1852–3); reported in James Grant Wilson, Thackeray in the United States: 1852–3, 1855–6 (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1904), pp. 81–82.

• She looks so haughty that I should have thought her a princess at the very least, with a pedigree reaching as far back as the Deluge. But this lady was no better born than many other ladies who give themselves airs; and all sensible people laughed at her absurd pretensions.
  • The Rose and the Ring (1855), Ch. 2.

• Except for the young or very happy, I can't say I am sorry for any one who dies.
  • Letter to Mrs. Bryan Waller Procter (26 November 1856), from The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, ed. Edgar F. Harden [Garland Publishing, Inc., 1994, ISBN 9780824036461], vol. 1, p. 763.

• I should like to see before I die, and think of it daily more and more, the commencement of Jesus Christ's christianism in the world, where I am sure people may be made a hundred times happier than by its present forms, Judaism, ascenticism, Bullarism.
  • Thackeray, William Makepeace. Nov. 1840, A Collection of Letters (1887). Ardent Media. p. 36.

The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844)

• 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.
  • Ch. 5

• The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward.
  • Ch. 10.

• 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.
  • Ch. 13.

Sketches and Travels in London (1847–1850)

Sketches and Travels in London (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904). Papers contibuted to Punch from 1847 to 1850.

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

• Good humour may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.
  • "Mr. Brown's Letters to his Nephew: On Tailoring — And Toilettes in General", p. 12.

• I set it down as a maxim that it is good for a man to live where he can meet his betters, intellectual and social.
  • "Mr. Brown's Letters to His Nephew: On Friendship", p. 38.

• Let us be very gentle with our neighbours' failings; and forgive our friends their debts, as we hope ourselves to be forgiven.
  • "Mr. Brown's Letters to His Nephew: On Friendship", p. 42.

• When I say I know women, I mean I know that I don't know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as I have no doubt she is to herself.
  • "Mr. Brown's Letters to His Nephew: On Love, Marriage, Men and Women", p. 96.

• Stupid people, people who do not know how to laugh, are always pompous and self-conceited.
  • "Mr. Brown's Letters to His Nephew: On Love, Marriage, Men and Women", p. 109.

• Time passes—Time the consoler—Time the anodyne—Time the grey calm satirist, whose sad smile seems to say, Look, O man, at the vanity of the objects you pursue, and of yourself who pursue them!
  • "On the Pleasures of Being a Fogy", p. 143.

Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

Full text online

Numerous editions. Page numbers here are from the trade paperback edition, published in the series of Barnes and Noble Classics, ISBN 1-59308-071-9, 4th printing

Italics as in the book. Bold face added for emphasis.

The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

• “How can you—how dare you have such wicked, revengeful thoughts?”
  “Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural,” answered Miss Rebecca. “I’m no angel.” And, to say the truth, she certainly was not.
  • Chapter 2, “In Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign” (p. 12)

• 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.
  • Chapter 2, “In Which Miss Sharp and Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign” (p. 12)

• And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without a positive hump, may marry whom she likes.
  • Chapter 4, “The Green Silk Purse” (p. 27). Compare: "I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of", Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast Table; "The whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women", Bernard Shaw, Epistle Dedicatory to Man and Superman

• If mere parsimony could have made a man rich, Sir Pitt Crawley might have become very wealthy.
  • Chapter 9, “Family Portraits” (pp. 82-83)

• Vanity Fair—Vanity Fair! 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 what was sordid and foul; and yet he had rank, and honours, and power, somehow: and was a dignitary of the land, and a pillar of the state. He was high sheriff, and rode in a golden coach. Great ministers and statesmen courted him; and in Vanity Fair he had a higher place than the most brilliant genius or spotless virtue.
  • Chapter 9, “Family Portraits” (p. 84)

• “And for what follows after death,” would Mr. Crawley observe, throwing his gooseberry-coloured eyes up to the ceiling. He was always thinking of his brother’s soul, or of the souls of those who differed with him in opinion: it is a sort of comfort which many of the serious give themselves.
  • Chapter 10, “Miss Sharp Begins to Make Friends” (p. 91)

• What is there in a pair of pink cheeks and blue eyes forsooth? these dear moralists ask, and hint wisely that the gifts of genius, the accomplishments of the mind, the mastery of Mangnall’s Questions, and a ladylike knowledge of botany and geology, the knack of making poetry, the power of rattling sonatas in the Herz-manner, and so forth, are far more valuable endowments for a female, than those fugitive charms which a few years will inevitably tarnish. It is quite edifying to hear women speculate upon the worthlessness and the duration of beauty.
  • Chapter 12, “Quite a Sentimental Chapter” (p. 107)

• I am tempted to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great compliment to a woman.
  • Chapter 12, “Quite a Sentimental Chapter” (p. 108)

• But oh, mesdames, if you are not allowed to touch the heart sometimes in spite of syntax, and are not to be loved until you all know the difference between trimeter and tetrameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every schoolmaster perish miserably!
  • Chapter 12, “Quite a Sentimental Chapter” (p. 114)

• Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.
  • Chapter 13, “Sentimental and Otherwise” (p. 120)

• Whenever he met a great man he grovelled before him, and my-lorded him as only a free-born Briton can do.
  • Chapter 13, “Sentimental and Otherwise” (p. 125)

• When men of a certain sort, ladies, are in love, though they see the hook and the string, and the whole apparatus with which they are to be taken, they gorge the bait nevertheless—they must come to it—they must swallow it—and are presently struck and landed gasping.
  • Chapter 14, “Miss Crawley at Home” (p. 133)

• Like many wealthy people, it was Miss Crawley’s habit to accept as much service as she could get from her inferiors; and good-naturedly to take leave of them when she no longer found them useful. Gratitude among certain rich folks is scarcely natural or to be thought of. They take needy people’s services as their due. Nor have you, O poor parasite and humble hanger-on, much reason to complain! Your friendship for Dives is about as sincere as the return which it usually gets. It is money you love, and not the man; and were Croesus and his footman to change places, you know, you poor rogue, who would have the benefit of your allegiance.
  • Chapter 14, “Miss Crawley at Home” (p. 135)

• If people only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there would be!
  • Chapter 16, “The Letter on the Pincushion” (p. 153)

• The best of women (I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites. We don’t know how much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often those frank smiles which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude or disarm—I don’t mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models, and paragons of female virtue. Who has not seen a woman hide the dullness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one? We accept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it: we call this pretty treachery truth.
  • Chapter 17, “How Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano” (p. 167)

• It was over these few worthless papers that she brooded and brooded. She lived in her past life—every letter seemed to recall some circumstance of it. How well she remembered them all! His looks and tones, his dress, what he said and how—these relics and remembrances of dead affection were all that were left her in the world. And the business of her life, was—to watch the corpse of Love.
  • Chapter 18, “Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought?” (p. 174)

• She had been a gracious friend to Miss Briggs, the companion, also; and had secured the latter’s good-will by a number of those attentions and promises, which cost so little in the making, and are yet so valuable and agreeable to the recipient. Indeed every good economist and manager of a household must know how cheap and yet how amiable these professions are, and what a flavour they give to the most homely dish in life. Who was the blundering idiot who said that “fine words butter no parsnips”? Half the parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no other sauce. As the immortal Alexis Soyer can make more delicious soup for a half-penny than an ignorant cook can concoct with pounds of vegetables and meat, so a skilful artist will make a few simple and pleasing phrases go farther than ever so much substantial benefit-stock in the hands of a mere bungler. Nay, we know that substantial benefits often sicken some stomachs; whereas, most will digest any amount of fine words, and be always eager for more of the same food.
  • Chapter 19, “Miss Crawley at Nurse” (p. 179)

• Yes, if a man’s character is to be abused, say what you will, there’s nobody like a relation to do the business.
  • Chapter 19, “Miss Crawley at Nurse” (p. 183)

• Managing women, the ornaments of their sex—women who order everything for everybody, and know so much better than any person concerned what is good for their neighbours, don’t sometimes speculate upon the possibility of a domestic revolt, or upon other extreme consequences resulting from their overstrained authority.
  • Chapter 19, “Miss Crawley at Nurse” (pp. 184-185)

• Pity the fallen gentleman: you to whom money and fair repute are the chiefest good; and so, surely, are they in Vanity Fair.
  • Chapter 20, “In Which Captain Dobbin Acts as the Messenger of Hymen” (p. 193)

• Them’s my sentiments.
  • Chapter 21, “A Quarrel about an Heiress” (p. 198)

• Rawdon, with roars of laughter, related a dozen amusing anecdotes of his duns, and Rebecca’s adroit treatment of them. He vowed with a great oath that there was no woman in Europe who could talk a creditor over as she could. Almost immediately after their marriage, her practice had begun, and her husband found the immense value of such a wife. They had credit in plenty, but they had bills also in abundance, and laboured under a scarcity of ready money. Did these debt-difficulties affect Rawdon’s good spirits? No. 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. Rawdon and his wife had the very best apartments at the inn at Brighton; the landlord, as he brought in the first dish, bowed before them as to his greatest customers: and Rawdon abused the dinners and wine with an audacity which no grandee in the land could surpass. Long custom, a manly appearance, faultless boots and clothes, and a happy fierceness of manner, will often help a man as much as a great balance at the banker’s.
  • Chapter 22, “A Marriage and Part of a Honeymoon” (p. 212)

• “Well, my dear Blanche,” said the mother, “I suppose, as Papa wants to go, we must go; but we needn’t know them in England, you know.” And so, determined to cut their new acquaintance in Bond Street, these great folks went to eat his dinner at Brussels, and condescending to make him pay for their pleasure, showed their dignity by making his wife uncomfortable, and carefully excluding her from the conversation. This is a species of dignity in which the high-bred British female reigns supreme. To watch the behaviour of a fine lady to other and humbler women, is a very good sport for a philosophical frequenter of Vanity Fair.
  • Chapter 28, “In Which Amelia Invades the Low Countries” (p. 269)

• Dreadful doubt and anguish—prayers and fears and griefs unspeakable—followed the regiment. It was the women’s tribute to the war. It taxes both alike, and takes the blood of the men, and the tears of the women.
  • Chapter 31, “In Which Jos Sedley Takes Care of His Sister” (p. 301)

• It seemed a humiliation to old Osborne to think that his son, an English gentleman, a captain in the famous British army, should not be found worthy to lie in ground where mere foreigners were buried. Which of us is there can tell how much vanity lurks in our warmest regard for others, and how selfish our love is? Old Osborne did not speculate much upon the mingled nature of his feelings, and how his instinct and selfishness were combating together. He firmly believed that everything he did was right, that he ought on all occasions to have his own way—and like the sting of a wasp or serpent his hatred rushed out armed and poisonous against anything like opposition. He was proud of his hatred as of everything else. 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?
  • Chapter 35, “Widow and Mother” (pp. 346-347)

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

• Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children; and here was one who was worshipping a stone!
  • Chapter 37, “The Subject Continued” (p. 372)

• I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year.
  • Chapter 41, “In Which Becky Revisits the Halls of Her Ancestors” (p. 414)

• It is very likely that this lady, in her high station, had to submit to many a private indignity and to hide many secret griefs under a calm face. And let us, my brethren who have not our names in the Red Book, console ourselves by thinking comfortably how miserable our betters may be, and that Damocles, who sits on satin cushions and is served on gold plate, has an awful sword hanging over his head in the shape of a bailiff, or an hereditary disease, or a family secret, which peeps out every now and then from the embroidered arras in a ghastly manner, and will be sure to drop one day or the other in the right place.
  • Chapter 47, “Gaunt House” (p. 459)

• If you were heir to a dukedom and a thousand pounds a day, do you mean to say you would not wish for possession? Pooh! And it stands to reason that every great man, having experienced this feeling towards his father, must be aware that his son entertains it towards himself; and so they can’t but be suspicious and hostile.
  • Chapter 47, “Gaunt House” (p. 459)

• Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, “To-morrow, success or failure won’t matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.”
  • Chapter 61, “In Which Two Lights are Put Out” (pp. 597-598)

• I like to dwell upon this period of her life and to think that she was cheerful and happy. You see, she has not had too much of that sort of existence as yet, and has not fallen in the way of means to educate her tastes or her intelligence. She has been domineered over hitherto by vulgar intellects. It is the lot of many a woman. And as every one of the dear sex is the rival of the rest of her kind, timidity passes for folly in their charitable judgments; and gentleness for dullness; and silence—which is but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling folks, and tacit protestantism—above all, finds no mercy at the hands of the female Inquisition.
  • Chapter 62, “Am Rhein” (p. 613)

• When a traveller talks to you perpetually about the splendour of his luggage, which he does not happen to have with him, my son, beware of that traveller! He is, ten to one, an impostor.
  • Chapter 67, “Which Contains Births, Marriages, and Deaths” (p. 667)

• Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?—come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
  • Chapter 67, “Which Contains Births, Marriages, and Deaths” (p. 680; closing words)

The Book of Snobs (1848)

• Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders.
  • Ch. 1: "The Snob Playfully Dealt With".

• He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob.
  • Ch. 2: "The Snob Royal"

• It is impossible, in our condition of society, not to be sometimes a Snob.
  • Ch. 3: "The Influence of the Aristocracy on Snobs".

• If you will fling yourself under the wheels, Juggernaut will go over you, depend upon it.
  • Ch. 3: "The Influence of the Aristocracy on Snobs".

• That which we call a Snob, by any other name would still be Snobbish.
  • Ch. 18: "Party-Giving Snobs".

The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century (1848)

• Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life of the time; of the manners, the movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of society—the old times live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?
  • Lecture 3: "Steele".

• Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life that is the most wholesome society; 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.
  • Lecture 4: "Prior, Gay, and Pope".

• I suppose as long as novels last and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero, a wicked monster his opposite, and a pretty girl who finds a champion; bravery and virtue conquer beauty: and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him and honest folks come by their own.
  • Lecture 5: "Hogarth, Smollett, and Fielding".

• One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own. One suspects the genuineness of the tear, the naturalness of the humour.
  • Lecture 7: "Charity and Humour".

• There is no man that teaches us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison.
  • Lecture 7: "Charity and Humour".

• Humour is the mistress of tears; she knows the way to the fons lachrymarum, strikes in dry and rugged places with her enchanting wand, and bids the fountain gush and sparkle. She has refreshed myriads more from her natural springs, than ever tragedy has watered from her pompous old urn.
  • Lecture 7: "Charity and Humour".

The History of Pendennis (1848-1850)

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't: and are proud of our impotence, too.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!

• Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little
  • Ch. 4.

• It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't: and are proud of our impotence, too.
  • Ch. 6.

• Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire hopeless passion is my destiny.
  • Ch. 23.

• Remember, it's as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.
  • Ch. 28.

• Of the Corporation of the Goosequill — of the Press, my boy, … of the fourth estate … There she is — the great engine — she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world — her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous.
  • Ch. 30.

• Although I enter not,
  Yet round about the spot
  Ofttimes I hover,
  And near the sacred gate,
  With longing eyes I wait,
  Expectant of her.
  • "At the Church Gate", in Ch. 32.

• As the gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best.
  • Ch. 40.

• If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
  • Ch. 42.

• How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!
  • Ch. 70.

• We see flowers of good blooming in foul places.
  • Ch. 76.

The History of Henry Esmond (1852)

Full text online (1852)

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

• 'Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard, Master Harry — every man of every nation has done that — 'tis the living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my cost.
  • Bk. I, Ch. 6.

• 'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.
  • Bk. I, Ch. 7.

• There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.
  • Bk. II, Ch. 1.

• If there is a verity in wine, according to the old adage, what an amiable-natured character Dick's must have been! In proportion as he took in wine he overflowed with kindness.
  • Bk. II, Ch. 11.

• I think Steele shone rather than sparkled.
  • Bk. II, Ch. 11.

• Dick never thought that his bottle companion was a butt to aim at—only a friend to shake by the hand.
  • Bk. II, Ch. 11.

• We love being in love, that's the truth on't.
  • Bk. II, Ch. 15.

• 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.
  • Bk. III, Ch. 13.

The Newcomes (1854–1855)

• What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables.
  • Ch. 1.

• The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.
  • Ch. 9.

• 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.
  • Ch. 16.

• The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?
  • Ch. 20.

• To be beautiful is enough. If a woman can do that well, who shall demand more from her? You don't want a rose to sing.
  • Ch. 25.

• Young ladies may have been crossed in love, and have had their sufferings, their frantic moments of grief and tears, their wakeful nights, and so forth; but it is only in very sentimental novels that people occupy themselves perpetually with that passion; and, I believe, what are called broken hearts are very rare articles indeed.
  • Ch. 32.

• If love lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of spirit burns brightly; and if we die deplores us forever and loves still equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the faithful bosom—whence it passes with the pure soul beyond death; surely it shall be immortal!
  • Ch. 46.

• Bad husbands will make bad wives.
  • Ch. 55.

• People hate, as they love, unreasonably.
  • Ch. 56.

Ballads (1855)

Full text online

• This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is—
  A sort of soup or broth, or brew,
  Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes,
  That Greenwich never could outdo.
  • "The Ballad of Bouillabaisse", st. 2.

• Christmas is here:
  Winds whistle shrill,
  Icy and chill,
  Little care we:
  Little we fear
  Weather without,
  Sheltered about
  The Mahogany Tree.
  • "The Mahogany Tree", st. 1.

• Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin,
  That never has known the barber’s shear,
  All your wish is woman to win,
  This is the way that boys begin,—
  Wait till you come to Forty Year.
  • "The Age of Wisdom", st. 1.

• Werther had a love for Charlotte
  Such as words could never utter;
  Would you know how first he met her?
  She was cutting bread and butter.
  • "Sorrows of Werther", st. 1.

• Charlotte, having seen his body
  Borne before her on a shutter,
  Like a well-conducted person,
  Went on cutting bread and butter.
  • "Sorrows of Werther", st. 4.

• 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!”
  • "A Credo", st. 1.

• The play is done; the curtain drops,
  Slow falling to the prompter’s bell:
  A moment yet the actor stops,
  And looks around, to say farewell.
  It is an irksome word and task;
  And, when he’s laughed and said his say,
  He shows, as he removes the mask,
  A face that’s anything but gay.
  • "The End of the Play", st. 1.

The Virginians (1857-1859)

The Virginians (1857-1859)

I never know whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

• The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is for ever in a passion.
  • Ch. 4.

• Women like not only to conquer, but to be conquered.
  • Ch. 4.

• Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so?
  • Ch. 16.

• 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.
  • Ch. 20.

• 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?
  • Ch. 21.

• I would rather make my name than inherit it.
  • Ch. 26.

• He that has ears to hear, let him stuff them with cotton.
  • Ch. 38.

• I never know whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.
  • Ch. 56.

• Who does not believe his first passion eternal?
  • Ch. 57.

• Next to the very young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.
  • Ch. 61.

• If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied.
  • Ch. 66.

• 'Tis hard with respect to Beauty, that its possessor should not have even a life-enjoyment of it, but be compelled to resign it after, at the most, some forty years' lease.
  • Ch. 73.

• 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?
  • Ch. 92.

Lovel the Widower (1860)

• Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries!—what worthy man does not keep those in mind?
  • Ch. 1.

• Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.
  • Ch. 6.

• We are most of us very lonely in the world. You who have any who love you, cling to them, and thank God.
  • Ch. 6.

Four Georges (1860-1861)

• Bravery never goes out of fashion.
  • "George II".

• It is to the middle class we must look for the safety of England.
  • "George III".

• George, be a King!
  • "George III".
  • Said by Princess Augusta to her son, George III

Roundabout Papers (1863)

Roundabout Papers: Reprinted from "The Cornhill Magazine" (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1863)

• Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them—almost all women;—a vast number of clever, hard-headed men.
  • "On a Lazy Idle Boy", p. 7.

• Titles are abolished; and the American Republic swarms with men claiming and bearing them.
  • "On Ribbons", p. 30.

• The thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair […,] it stings me now as I write.
  • "Thorns in the Cushion", p. 72

• We who have lived before railways were made, belong to another world. […] It was only yesterday; but what a gulph between now and then? Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armour, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, ancient Britons, painted blue, and so forth—all these belong to the old period. […] But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. […] We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark.
  • "De Juventute", pp. 110, 112.

• Certain it is that scandal is good brisk talk, whereas praise of one's neighbour is by no means lively hearing. An acquaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and served with mustard and cayenne pepper, excites the appetite; whereas a slice of cold friend with currant jelly is but a sickly, unrelishing meat.
  • "On a Hundred Years Hence", p. 211.

• 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.
  • "A Mississippi Bubble", p. 269.

• So they pass away: friends, kindred, the dearest-loved, grown people, aged, infants. As we go on the down-hill journey, the mile-stones are grave-stones, and on each more and more names are written; unless haply you live beyond man's common age, when friends have dropped off, and, tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you reach the terminus alone.
  • "On Letts's Diary", p. 291.

• Those who are gone, you have. 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: and you will presently get up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you will no more be seen.
  • "On Letts's Diary", p. 292.

Misattributed

• The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.
  • In this work are exhibited in a very high degree the two most engaging powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new. ~ Samuel Johnson, "The Life of Alexander Pope" from Lives of the English Poets (1781) [1]

Quotes about Thackeray

• Thackeray is everybody's past — is everybody's youth. Forgotten friends flit about the passages of dreamy colleges and unremembered clubs; we hear fragments of unfinished conversations, we see faces without names for an instant, fixed forever in some trivial grimace: we smell the strong smell of social cliques now quite incongruous to us; and there stir in all the little rooms at once the hundred ghosts of oneself.
  • G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature (1913) [University of Notre Dame Press, 1963], Ch. II: The Great Victorian Novelists (p. 64).

• (“Chip Delany says that science fiction is as much a way of "reading" as it is a way of writing, and learn that. What is it that we have to learn?”) That's true for realism, too. You have to learn how to read Jane Austen. We have to learn how to read realistic fiction. A lot of people never do. Some of them, our fantasy readers, don't know how to read Thackeray, or any novels. They don't know what to expect, they don't know what the rewards are supposed to be.
  • 1994 interview in Conversations with Ursula Le Guin

External links

• Works by William Makepeace Thackeray at Project Gutenberg
• Vanity Fair Online