Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Language
A great writer is the friend and benefactor of his readers.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
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.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Government
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 criticise.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Criticism
He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Poetry
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
How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Brave
Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly, as when they discuss it freely.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
The real object of the drama is the exhibition of the human character.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Poetry, Poets
The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Persuasion
Will without power is like children playing at soldiers.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: One liners
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.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Progress
To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Prejudice
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Those who seem to lead the public taste, are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction it is spontaneously pursuing.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Fashion
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
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
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: Death, Heroes/Heroism, Heroes, Heroism
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
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
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.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Men naturally sympathize with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with pity.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Party
Politeness has been well defined as benevolence in small things.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Politeness, Manners
A church is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favored and cherished.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Religion
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
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
We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Humanity, Britain
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