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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Thomas B. Macaulay
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Our judgment ripens our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the Spring of life and the fruits of its Autumn.
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The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what the well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration.
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He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.
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A few more years will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency which once belonged to the name of Byron.
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And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
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