William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.

Life itself was only futility, vain words, a squabble of cap and bells.

Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.

The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

Heaven fashioned us of nothing; and we strive to bring ourselves to nothing.

We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.

why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.

Look what a little vain dust we are!

We are nothing. - Tomorrow we may be die. We are nothing. - You and me.

We're all making castles in the sand, wonderful tapestries, an exquisite corpse. But is it meaningful? No. It's dogs barking. It doesn't mean anything beyond our yelping, at the pain of being alive.

This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

We try, we fail, we posture, we aspire, we pontificate - and then we age, shrink, die, and vanish.

For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson of your life - the lesson of your utter insignificance.

Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed 'Wisdom.' And then I know exactly what is going to follow: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'

You must realize that one day you will die. Until then you are worthless.

It even feels absurd to be writing or singing a song at all - in the context of actual death, being alive feels absurd.

I searched all areas of knowledge, and not only did I fail to find anything, but I was convinced that all those who had explored as I did had also come up with nothing. Not only had they found nothing, but they had clearly acknowledged the same thing that had brought me to despair: the only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

It is meaningless that we are born, it is meaningless that we die.

When you understand that you will die to-morrow, if not to-day, and nothing will be left, then everything is so unimportant!... So one goes on living, amusing oneself with hunting, with work - anything so as not think of death

All life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again.

Only death reveals what a nothing the body of man is.

Was life nothing more than a storm that constantly washed away what had been there only a moment before, and left behind something barren and unrecognizable?