Thomas B. Macaulay Quotes - Page 7

The opinion of the great body of the reading public is very materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those who assume a right to criticize.

The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this that this was our last Revolution.

A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.

With respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher.

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.

Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.

So true it is, that nature has caprices which art cannot imitate.

Language is the machine of the poet.

A Grecian history, perfectly written should be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts.

Every sect clamors for toleration when it is down.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

We hardly know an instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking and so grotesque as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stocking, half Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verses in the other.

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

Reform, that we may preserve.

What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man!-To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion! To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity; to be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries!

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.

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.

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

In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals.