Thomas B. Macaulay Quotations

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.

Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.

And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?

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

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.

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

I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.

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.

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?

There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.

To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.

The English Bible - a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.

Temple was a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.

The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.

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

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

A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.

The effect of violent dislike between groups has always created an indifference to the welfare and honor of the state.

The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.

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

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

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.

An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia

He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.

I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.

Such night in England ne'er had been, nor ne'er again shall be.

That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.

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.

She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.

Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!

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

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.

Now who will stand on either hand / And keep the bridge with me?

Obadiah Bind - their - kings - in - chains - and -their - nobles - with - links - of - iron.

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

He . . . felt towards those whom he had deserted that peculiar malignity which has, in all ages, been characteristic of apostates.

History begins in novel and ends in essay.

We have heard it said that five per cent is the natural interest of money.

I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something that shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.

Was none who would be foremost To lead such dire attack; But those behind cried "Forward!" And those before cried "Back!

Few of the many wise apothegms, which have been uttered from the time of the seven sages of Greece to that of poor Richard, have prevented a single foolish action

The sentinel on Whitehall gate looked forth into the night.

A propensity which, for want of a better name, we will venture to christen Boswellism.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.

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.

It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.

A church is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favored and cherished.

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.

Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim.... If, like those of Rochefoucault, it be sparkling and whimsical, it may make an excellent motto for an essay. But few, indeed, of the many wise apophthegms which have been uttered from the time of the Seven Sages of Greece to that of Poor Richard have prevented a single foolish action.

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.

History distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.

Half-knowledge is worse than ignorance.

If any person had told the Parliament which met in terror and perplexity after the crash of 1720 that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams, that the annual revenue would equal the principal of that debt which they considered an intolerable burden, that for one man of

Scotland by no means escaped the fate ordained for every country which is connected, but not incorporated, with another country of greater resources.

War is never lenient but where it is wanton; where men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge. This may be bad, but it is human nature; it is the clay as it came from the hands of the Potter.

Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.

The real object of the drama is the exhibition of human character.

A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil terminates in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect on the whole character. The former is a local malady; the latter, constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender is lost, he too often flings the remainder of his virtue after it in despair.

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

Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasonings.

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.

Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle.

The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature; and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected; but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever.

Everybody's business is nobody's business.

The end of government is the happiness of the people.

Those who seem to load the public taste are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction which it is spontaneously pursuing.

The desire of posthumous fame and the dread of posthumous reproach and execration are feelings from the influence of which scarcely any man is perfectly free, and which in many men are powerful and constant motives of action.

The Saviour of mankind Himself, in whose blameless life malice could find no act to impeach, has been called in question for words spoken.

It was before Deity embodied in a human form walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of the synagogue, and the doubts of the academy, and the pride of the portico, and the fasces of the lictor, and the swords of thirty legions were humbled in the dust.

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.

How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his premises so ably, should assume his premises so foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human nature.

Even Holland and Spain have been positively, though not relatively, advancing.

Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions.

At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished for fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling.

What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant.

Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors.

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.

It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.

Those who have read history with discrimination know the fallacy of those panegyrics and invectives which represent individuals as effecting great moral and intellectual revolutions, subverting established systems, and imprinting a new character on their age. The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd suppose.

Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue stands Shakespeare. His variety is like the variety of nature,--endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity.

I am always nearest to myself," says the Latin proverb.

The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.

If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.

Power, safely defied, touches its downfall.

Men naturally sympathize with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with pity.

Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school--its abstract doctrines for the initiated; its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables, for the vulgar.

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.

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.

In after-life you may have friends--fond, dear friends; but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows.

In the modern languages there was not, six hundred years ago, a single volume which is now read. The library of our profound scholar must have consisted entirely of Latin books.

Language is the machine of the poet.

The study of the properties of numbers, Plato tells us, habituates the mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and raises us above the material universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this study, not that they may be able to buy or sell, not that they may qualify themselves to be shopkeepers or travelling merchants, but that they may learn to withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this visible and tangible world, and to fix them on the immutable essences of things.

Reform, that we may preserve.

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