Thomas B. Macaulay Quotes

When the great Kepler bad at length discovered the harmonic laws that regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed: "Whether my discoveries will be read by posterity or by my contemporaries is a matter that concerns them more than me. I may well be contented to wait one century for a reader, when God Himself, during so many thousand years, has waited for an observer like myself.

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

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

The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.

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.

The sweeter sound of woman's praise.

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

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.

Grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Western literature has been more influenced by the Bible than any other book.

The perfect disinterestedness and self-devotion of which men seem incapable, but which is sometimes found in women.

I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.

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.

In every age the vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues.

A man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected; a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who in that department succeeded pre-eminently.

A dominant religion is never ascetic.

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

Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems.

We never could clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popular in writing.

The Church is the handmaid of tyranny and the steady enemy of liberty.

Finesse is the best adaptation of means to circumstances.

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.

But the time will come when New England will be as thickly peopled as old England. Wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much with you as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams; and, in those Manchesters and Birminghams, hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test.

Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.

Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.

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

Ye diners out from whom we guard our spoons.

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

The most beautiful object in the world, it will be allowed, is a beautiful woman.

Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.

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.

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.

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?"

No man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.

A few more years will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency which once belonged to the name of Byron.

Half-knowledge is worse than ignorance.

The good-humor of a man elated with success often displays itself towards enemies.

Even the law of gravitation would be brought into dispute were there a pecuniary interest involved.

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.