Daily Inspiration Quote by William Makepeace Thackeray

Thackeray doesn’t let you off with the comforting belief that snobbery is a personality flaw belonging to Other People. He makes it a weather system. In Victorian Britain, class wasn’t just an economic reality; it was a moral theater with strict casting. “Our condition of Society” is the tell: snobbery isn’t presented as a private vice but as a public operating system, baked into who gets listened to, invited in, married up, or quietly dismissed.

The line works because it’s both confession and indictment. “Impossible” sounds like an excuse until you hear the trapdoor beneath it: if snobbery is inevitable, then it’s also everywhere, including in the reader who’s nodding along. Thackeray’s famous project in The Book of Snobs and Vanity Fair is to show how people launder their hunger for status into respectable tastes, moral judgments, even romantic choices. The snob isn’t only the social climber; it’s also the person who believes their own refinement is proof of virtue.

There’s a sly democratic sting, too. Thackeray isn’t arguing that hierarchy is natural; he’s arguing that it’s contagious. A society arranged like a ladder trains everyone to look up with envy and down with contempt. “Sometimes” is the blade’s twist: he grants you moments of decency, then reminds you how quickly the room, the title, the accent can flip your instincts. In that sense, the quote isn’t moralizing. It’s forensic.