Thomas B. Macaulay Quotes

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

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

It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One who does not value real glory will not value its counterfeit.

Finesse is the best adaptation of means to circumstances.

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

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

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

Ye diners out from whom we guard our spoons.

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.

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.

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.

The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.

Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages.

Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors.

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.

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.

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

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

The Orientals have another word for accident; it is "kismet,"--fate.

A page digested is better than a volume hurriedly read.

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?"

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

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.

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

That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.

What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one,--and that is not only true, but identical,--that men always act from self-interest.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

By poetry we mean the art of employing of 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.

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

Our judgment ripens; our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the Spring of life and the fruits of its Autumn.

This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another.

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

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

Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.

Politeness has been well defined as benevolence in small things.

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

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.

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

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of 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.

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

He [Charles II] was utterly without ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the administration.

In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man.

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.

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

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

A system in which the two great commandments are to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife.

Reform, that we may preserve.

History begins in novel and ends in essay.

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