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

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
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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.
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The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.
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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.
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Man is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his beliefs to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.
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It may be laid as an universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less.
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The real object of the drama is the exhibition of human character.
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Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.
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Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the production of cotton and molasses.
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Half-knowledge is worse than ignorance.
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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.
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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.
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Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.
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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.
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The upper current of society presents no pertain criterion by which we can judge of the direction in which the under current flows.
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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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The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.
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A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.
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She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.
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Was none who would be foremost To lead such dire attack But those behind cried Forward! And those before cried Back!
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In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.
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