Thomas B. Macaulay Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Thomas B. Macaulay
Thomas B. Macaulay Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Thomas B. Macaulay on Wise Famous Quotes.
No man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.
There is no country in Europe which is so easy to over-run as Spain; there is no country which it is more difficult to conquer.
Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.
The perfect disinterestedness and self-devotion of which men seem incapable, but which is sometimes found in women.
I have seen the hippopotamus, both asleep and awake; and I can assure you that, awake or asleep, he is the ugliest of the works of God.
In employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, we are only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself.
The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.
A system in which the two great commandments are to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife.
The Saviour of mankind Himself, in whose blameless life malice could find no act to impeach, has been called in question for words spoken.
Ambrose Phillips ... who had the honor of bringing into fashion a species of composition which has been called, after his name, Namby Pamby.
Those who seem to load the public taste are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction which it is spontaneously pursuing.
Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.
Sense can support herself handsomely in most countries on some eighteen pence a day; but for fantasy, planets and solar systems, will not suffice.
Byron owed the vast influence which he exercised over his contemporaries at least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry.
Our judgment ripens; our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the Spring of life and the fruits of its Autumn.
Man is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his beliefs to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.
If ever Shakespeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along.
This is the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he is profoundly ignorant.
We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison; let the vender prove it to be sanative.
History distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.
Scotland by no means escaped the fate ordained for every country which is connected, but not incorporated, with another country of greater resources.
We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary.
The upper current of society presents no pertain criterion by which we can judge of the direction in which the under current flows.
We must succumb to the general influence of the times. No man can be of the tenth century, if he would; be must be a man of the nineteenth century.
In perseverance, in self command, in forethought, in all virtues which conduce to success in life, the Scots have never been surpassed.
A few more years will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency which once belonged to the name of Byron.
Thus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic.
A church is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favored and cherished.
We are free, we are civilised, to little purpose, if we grudge to any portion of the human race an equal measure of freedom and civilisation.
A Grecian history, perfectly written should be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts.
I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.
Lars Porsena of Clusium
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrongs no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrongs no more.
We never could clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popular in writing.
With respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher.
The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this that this was our last Revolution.
The history of nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best studied in works not professedly historical.
That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.
The ascendency of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendency which naturally and properly belonged to intellectual superiority.
More sinners are cursed at not because we despise their sins but because we envy their success at sinning.
He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked.
It may be laid as an universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less.
The whole history of Christianity proves that she has little indeed to fear from persecution as a foe, but much to fear from persecution as an ally.
[I can] scarcely write upon mathematics or mathematicians. Oh for words to express my abomination of the science.
He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.
In the plays of Shakespeare man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn.
As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.