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We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
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The good-humor of a man elated with success often displays itself towards enemies.
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It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.
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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.
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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.
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Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.
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Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.
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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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In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America.
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Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!
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She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.
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Those who seem to load the public taste are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction which it is spontaneously pursuing.
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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 criticize.
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Thus, then, stands the case. It is good, that authors should be remunerated and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good.
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