Quotes from William Makepeace Thackeray

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.

Which of us that is thirty years old has not had its Pompeii? Deep under ashes lies the life of youth--the careless sport, the pleasure and the passion, the darling joy.

Alas! we are the sport of destiny.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Sir, Respect Your Dinner: idolize it, enjoy it properly. You will be many hours in the week, many weeks in the year, and many years in your life happier if you do.

Life is the soul's nursery.

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

Life without laughing is a dreary blank.

Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?

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.

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

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.

What man's life is not overtaken by one or more of those tornadoes that send us out of the course, and fling us on rocks to shelter as best we may?

Tis 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.

If a man has committed wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his errors out to the world than his own relations.

I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning.

When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.

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