William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist, author and illustrator, who was born in India. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1848 novel Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of British society, and the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which was adapted for a 1975 film by Stanley Kubrick.
In 1887 the Royal Society of Arts unveiled a blue plaque to commemorate Thackeray at the house at 2 Palace Green, London, that had been built for him in the 1860s. It is now the location of the Israeli Embassy. Thackeray’s former home in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, is now a restaurant named after the author.
Thackeray was also a member of the Albion Lodge of the Ancient Order of Druids at Oxford. (via Wikipedia)
A few of his great quotes are given below:
On Kindness:
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.
On Life:
Life is the soul’s nursery – its training place for the destinies of eternity.
Might I give counsel to any man, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and in life, that is the most wholesome society learn to admire rightly the great pleasure of life is that. Note what great men admire.
The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.
Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.
She lived in her past life- these relics and remembrances of dead affection were all that was left her in the world.
On Success:
If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick and easy ruin is.
On Love:
To love and win is the best thing.
To love and lose, the next best.
People hate as they love, unreasonably.
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.
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 trameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce, and every schoolmaster perish miserably!
It is better to love wisely, no doubt: but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.
On Humour:
Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?
Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.
Other Quotes:
One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object, in order, as we said, to be consistent.
Bravery never goes out of fashion.
The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.
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?
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.