Quote

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?

Thomas B. Macaulay

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas B. Macaulay
Law
Stupidity
Turns
Son
People
Habit
Exclaim
News
Impenetrable
Stupid
Prince
Told
Served
Turn
James
Possible
George

More quotes by Thomas B. Macaulay

Image
What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
The real object of the drama is the exhibition of human character.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
Our judgment ripens our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the Spring of life and the fruits of its Autumn.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
The ascendency of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendency which naturally and properly belonged to intellectual superiority.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Reform, that we may preserve.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
The English Bible - a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man!-To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion! To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity to be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries!
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
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
Image
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