The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Religion
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.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Beliefs
Oh, wherefore come ye forth in triumph from the north, With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red? And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout? And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Wine
Many politicians lay 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.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Politicians, Freedom, Politics
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.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Religion, Bible
The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Every age and 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.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Vice
As in every human character so in every transaction there is a mixture of good and evil: a little exaggeration, a little suppression, a judicious use of epithets, a watchful and searching skepticism with respect to the evidence on one side, a convenient credulity with respect to every report or tradition on the other, may easily make a saint of Laud, or a tyrant of Henry the Fourth.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: History
A great writer is the friend and benefactor of his readers.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Heroes, Heroism, Heroes/Heroism, Death
A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words, what the painter does by means of colors.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Poetry
It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age. 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.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Influence
History has its foreground and its background, and it is principally in the management of its perspective that one artist differs from another. Some events must be represented on a large scale, others diminished; the great majority will be lost in the dimness of the horizon, and a general idea of their joint effect will be given by a few slight touches.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: History
Alas for human nature, that the wounds of vanity should smart and bleed so much longer than the wounds of affection!
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Vanity
Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Reform, Correction
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd supposes.—But the same feelings which in ancient Rome produced the apotheosis of a popular emperor, and in modern times the canonization of a devout prelate, lead men to cherish an illusion which furnishes them with something to adore.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Greatness
The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Persuasion
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.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: History
He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
And she (the Roman Catholic Church) may still exist in undiminished vigor, when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Religion
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.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
He alone reads history aright, who, observing how powerfully circumstances influence the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pass into virtues, and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: History
In Plato’s opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon’s opinion, philosophy was made for man.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Science, Philosophy, Philosophers
A page digested is better than a volume hurriedly read.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Reading
Charles V. said that a man who knew four languages was worth four men; and Alexander the Great so valued learning, that he used to say he was more indebted to Aristotle for giving him knowledge, than to his father Philip for giving him life.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Knowledge
There is no malice like the malice of the renegade.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Proverbial Wisdom
The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Religion, Christianity, Christians
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