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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.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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William Makepeace Thackeray
Age: 52 †
Born: 1811
Born: July 18
Died: 1863
Died: December 24
Novelist
Prosaist
Writer
Calcutta
William Makepeace Thackeray
George Fitz-Boodle
Poor
Spirited
Altogether
Coward
Sluggard
Decline
Unambitious
Calls
Declines
Philosopher
Pretends
Worth
Eminence
Struggle
Attaining
More quotes by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Pall Mall Gazette is written by gentlemen for gentlemen.
William Makepeace Thackeray
She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slip-shod and in curl-papers, all day.
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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.
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The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Dare and the world always yields or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and it will succumb.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Oh, brother wearers of motley, are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and trembling and the jingling of cap and bells?
William Makepeace Thackeray
If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick and easy ruin is.
William Makepeace Thackeray
To be thought rich is as good as to be rich.
William Makepeace Thackeray
It seems to me one cannot sit down in that place [the Round Reading room of the British Museum] without a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table, and to have thanked Heaven for my English birthright, freely to partake of these beautiful books, and speak the truth I find there.
William Makepeace Thackeray
How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy! Pendennis. Book ii. Chap. xxxi.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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.
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What a charming reconciler and peacemaker money is!
William Makepeace Thackeray
Be it remembered that man subsists upon the air more than upon his meat and drink but no one can exist for an hour without a copious supply of air. The atmosphere which some breathe is contaminated and adulterated, and with its vital principles so diminished that it cannot fully decarbonize the blood, nor fully excite the nervous system.
William Makepeace Thackeray
The great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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
Alas! we are the sport of destiny.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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
For his part, every beauty of art or nature made him thankful as well as happy, and that the pleasure to be had in listening to fine music, as in looking at the stars in the sky, or at a beautiful landscape or picture, was a benefit for which we might thank Heaven as sincerely as for any other worldly blessing.
William Makepeace Thackeray
What will a man not do when frantic with love? To what baseness will he not demean himself? What pangs will he not make others suffer, so that he may ease his selfish heart?
William Makepeace Thackeray
