Thomas B. Macaulay famous quotes

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

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Real

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

#Law #People #Enemy

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

#Kings #Book #Desire

A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Constitution

The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Mixtures #Portraits #Painting

Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Advertising #Making Money #Mint

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.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Humor #Government #Broken

And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#God #Father #Men

The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Oratory #Persuasion

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.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Real #Doe #Sycophants

The ascendency of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendency which naturally and properly belonged to intellectual superiority.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Order #Long #Intellectual

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

#Retirement #Grief #Meditation

Boswell is the first of biographers.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Firsts

Every sect clamors for toleration when it is down.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Clamor #Bigotry

Beards in olden times, were the emblems of wisdom and piety.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Beard #Emblems #Piety

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.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Imagination #Miracle #Mind

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.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Art #Imagination #Grace

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

#Fate #Kismet #Accidents

Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Equal

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

#Men #Enemy #Good Humor

Complete self-devotion is woman's part.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Self #Devotion

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

#Men #Self #Perfect

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.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Freedom #Learning #Self

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Useless #Maxims

In employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, we are only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Christian #Fiction #Example

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.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Hands #Excitement #Individual

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

#Writing #Conversation #Should

The passages in which Milton has alluded to his own circumstances are perhaps read more frequently, and with more interest, than any other lines in his poems.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Lines #Milton #Circumstances

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.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Discovery #Years #Law

All the walks of literature are infested with mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting all the distortions of their intellects and stripping the covering from all the putrid sores of their feelings.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Feelings #Literature #Covering

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 B. Macaulay

#Drama #Character #Sight

Byron owed the vast influence which he exercised over his contemporaries at least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Real #Influence #Byron

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance to him.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Children #Poetry #Mind

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

#Age #Human Nature #Found

Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Parent #Forever #Sound

The temple of silence and reconciliation.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Silence #Temples #Graves

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.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Queens #Play #Evil

Satire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin poets whose works have come down to us were not mere imitators of foreign models; and it is therefore the sort of composition in which they have never been excelled.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Latin #Poet #Satire

It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat of government, and took little part in the strife of factions, gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine verse.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Distance #Rome #Government

The sweeter sound of woman's praise.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Sound #Praise

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

#Mountain #Firsts #Dawn

It is good to be often reminded of the inconsistency of human nature, and to learn to look without wonder or disgust on the weaknesses which are found in the strongest minds.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Humanity #Mind #Looks

Ye diners out from whom we guard our spoons.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Spoons #Diners #Eating

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.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Men #Sophistry #Auditors

A beggarly people, A church and no steeple.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#People #Church #Steeples

Then none was for a party; Than all were for the state; Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great: Then lands were fairly portioned; Then spoils were fairly sold: The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Brother #Party #Men

This is the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he is profoundly ignorant.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Book #Men #Ignorant

Cut off my head, and singular I am, Cut off my tail, and plural I appear; Although my middle's left, there's nothing there! What is my head cut off? A sounding sea; What is my tail cut off? A rushing river; And in their mingling depths I fearless play, Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Cutting #Sea #Fishing

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

#Past #Men #Views

No particular man is necessary to the state. We may depend on it that, if we provide the country with popular institutions, those institutions will provide it with great men.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Country #Men #May

The hearts of men are their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their eloquence.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Book #Heart #Men

I have not the smallest doubt that, if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilisation would perish; or order and property would be saved by a strong military government, and liberty would perish.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Strong #Military #Government

As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Freedom #Government #Order

Politeness has been well defined as benevolence in small things.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Benevolence #Politeness #Wells

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

#Money #Law #Would Be

... it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Mean #Class #People

The doctrine which, from the very first origin of religious dissensions, has been held by bigots of all sects, when condensed into a few words and stripped of rhetorical disguise, is simply this: I am in the right, and you are in the wrong. When you are the stronger, you ought to tolerate me; for it is your duty to tolerate truth. But when I am the stronger I shall persecute you; for it is my duty to persecute error.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Religious #Errors #Atheism

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

#Atheism #Doctrine #Philosopher

The Church is the handmaid of tyranny and the steady enemy of liberty.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Enemy #Church #Liberty

People who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Pride #People #Achievement

A perfect historian must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make his narrative affecting and picturesque; yet he must control it so absolutely as to content himself with the materials which he finds, and to refrain from supplying deficiencies by additions of his own. He must be a profound and ingenious reasoner; yet he must possess sufficient self-command to abstain from casting his facts in the mould of his hypothesis.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Powerful #Self #Profound

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

#Names #Years #Byron

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 B. Macaulay

#Sunday #People #Doubt

Power, safely defied, touches its downfall.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Power #Downfall

There are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Country #School #Government

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 B. Macaulay

#Party #Men #Looks

Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school--its abstract doctrines for the initiated; its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables, for the vulgar.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#School #Political #Politics

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.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Men #May #Politics

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Children #Poetry #Littles

So true it is, that nature has caprices which art cannot imitate.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Art #Nature #Caprice

In after-life you may have friends--fond, dear friends; but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Mother #May #Dear Friend

In the modern languages there was not, six hundred years ago, a single volume which is now read. The library of our profound scholar must have consisted entirely of Latin books.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Latin #Book #Years

If ever Shakespeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Imagination #Rant #Hurrying

The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Counting

I am always nearest to myself," says the Latin proverb.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Latin #Selfishness

Lars Porsena of Clusium By the Nine Gods he swore That the great house of Tarquin Should suffer wrongs no more.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#House #Suffering #Nine

Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Lying #Heart #Dust

Was none who would be foremost To lead such dire attack; But those behind cried "Forward!" And those before cried "Back!
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Confusion #Would Be #Behinds

War is never lenient but where it is wanton; where men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge. This may be bad, but it is human nature; it is the clay as it came from the hands of the Potter.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#War #Hate #Fighting

A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil terminates in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect on the whole character. The former is a local malady; the latter, constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender is lost, he too often flings the remainder of his virtue after it in despair.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Character #Evil #Despair

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.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Spring #Expression #Ideas

Scotland by no means escaped the fate ordained for every country which is connected, but not incorporated, with another country of greater resources.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Country #Mean #Fate

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.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Running #Country #Europe

The upper current of society presents no pertain criterion by which we can judge of the direction in which the under current flows.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Judging #Society #Flow

In the plays of Shakespeare man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Passion #Men #Play

Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue stands Shakespeare. His variety is like the variety of nature,--endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Mean #Diversity #Human Nature

Language is the machine of the poet.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Machines #Language #Poet

Those who have read history with discrimination know the fallacy of those panegyrics and invectives which represent individuals as effecting great moral and intellectual revolutions, subverting established systems, and imprinting a new character on their age. The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd suppose.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Character #Mean #Greatness

Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Character #Passion #Prejudice

Office of itself does much to equalize politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level; but it does bring high characters down and low characters up towards a common standard.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Character #Mean #Office

At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished for fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Country #Class #Feelings

What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Want #Motive

Every age and every 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 B. Macaulay

#Fashion #Age #Generations

The study of the properties of numbers, Plato tells us, habituates the mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and raises us above the material universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this study, not that they may be able to buy or sell, not that they may qualify themselves to be shopkeepers or travelling merchants, but that they may learn to withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this visible and tangible world, and to fix them on the immutable essences of things.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Plato #Essence #Numbers

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.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Men #Would Be #Influence

Only imagine a man acting for one single day on the supposition that all his neighbors believe all that they profess, and act up to all that they believe!
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Believe #Men #Acting

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.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Men #Self #Humanity

Facts are the mere dross of history. It is from the abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent among them, like gold in the ore, that the mass derives its whole value; and the precious particles are generally combined with the baser in such a manner that the separation is a task of the utmost difficulty.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Lying #History #Gold

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

#Art #Philosophy #History

Even Holland and Spain have been positively, though not relatively, advancing.
-- Thomas B. Macaulay

#Progress #Spain #Holland