Thomas B. Macaulay Quotes

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.

To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god.

From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness,-a system in which the two great commandments were to hate your neighbour and to love your neighbour's wife.

A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf... For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then be withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties.

Finesse is the best adaptation of means to circumstances.

It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it.

One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One who does not value real glory will not value its counterfeit.

Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Ye diners out from whom we guard our spoons.

The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.

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.

The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.

Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors.

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.

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night.

The impenetrable stupidity of Prince George (son-in-law of James II) served his turn. It was his habit, when any news was told him, to exclaim, "Est il possible?"-"Is it possible?"

He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked.

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.

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.

That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.

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.

The temple of silence and reconciliation.

It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it.

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.

Our judgment ripens; our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the Spring of life and the fruits of its Autumn.

Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge;

but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another.

Politeness has been well defined as benevolence in small things.

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.

We must judge of a form of government by it's general tendency, not by happy accidents

There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

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?

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history.

Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.

The reluctant obedience of distant provinces generally costs more than it - The Territory is worth. Empires which branch out widely are often more flourishing for a little timely pruning.

None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.

A beggarly people, A church and no steeple.

The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.

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 English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good.

Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.

Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.

The hearts of men are their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their eloquence.

The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn.