Thomas B. Macaulay Quotes
-
A few more years will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency which once belonged to the name of Byron.
→ -
The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?
→ -
The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.
→ -
To carry the spirit of peace into war is a weak and cruel policy. When an extreme case calls for that remedy which is in its own nature most violent, and which, in such cases, is a remedy only because it is violent, it is idle to think of mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothing which negotiation or submission will do better: and to act on any other principle is, not to save blood and money, but to squander them.
→ -
Even Holland and Spain have been positively, though not relatively, advancing.
→ -
A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.
→ -
Re: Robert Montgomery's Poems His writing bears the same relation to poetry which a Turkey carpet bears to a picture. There are colours in the Turkey carpet out of which a picture might be made. There are words in Mr. Montgomery's writing which, when disposed in certain orders and combinations,have made, and will make again, good poetry. But, as they now stand, they seem to be put together on principle in such a manner as to give no image of anything in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.
→ -
But thou, through good and evil, praise and blame, Wilt not thou love me for myself alone? Yes, thou wilt love me with exceeding love, And I will tenfold all that love repay; Still smiling, though the tender may reprove, Still faithful, though the trusted may betray.
→ -
The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this that this was our last Revolution.
→ -
The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
→ -
We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison; let the vender prove it to be sanative.
→ -
Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the production of cotton and molasses.
→ -
Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.
→ -
The chief-justice was rich, quiet, and infamous.
→ -
The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets. Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second.
→ -
A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read. He may be very ill informed respecting a question: all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate; but speak he must. And if he is a man of ability, of tact, and of intrepidity, he soon finds that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully.
→ -
There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him; he changed his mind, and went to the oars.
→ -
Both in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigor.
→ -
The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.
→ -
With respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher.
→ -
The Orientals have another word for accident; it is "kismet,"--fate.
→ -
Our judgment ripens; our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the Spring of life and the fruits of its Autumn.
→ -
I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history.
→ -
She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.
→ -
It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat of government, and took little part in the strife of factions, gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine verse.
→ -
Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.
→ -
And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
→ -
I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.
→ -
Queen Mary had a way of interrupting tattle about elopements, duels, and play debts, by asking the tattlers, very quietly yet significantly, whether they had ever read her favorite sermon--Dr. Tillotson on Evil Speaking.
→ -
The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what the well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration.
→
Thomas B. Macaulay
- Born: October 25, 1800
- Died: December 28, 1859
- Occupation: Former Secretary at War
Related Authors
-
Gretchen Rubin Author -
Edmund Burke Statesman -
Thomas Carlyle Philosopher -
William Wilberforce British Politician -
Richard Brinsley Sheridan Playwright -
Robert Peel Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -
Edward Gibbon Historian -
William Jones Philologist -
William E. Gladstone Former Chancellor of the Exchequer -
Samuel Johnson Writer -
Matthew Arnold Poet -
-
G. M. Trevelyan Historian -
James Boswell Lawyer -
Joseph Addison Essayist -
William Makepeace Thackeray Novelist -
James Mill Economist -
Hannah More Writer -
Walter Scott Baronet Scott