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We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
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More quotes by Thomas B. Macaulay

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That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.
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A man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who in that department succeeded pre-eminently.
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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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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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The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.
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Oh, wherefore come ye forth in triumph from the north, With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red? And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout? And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?
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We hardly know an instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking and so grotesque as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stocking, half Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verses in the other.
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Grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.
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This is the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he is profoundly ignorant.
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[I can] scarcely write upon mathematics or mathematicians. Oh for words to express my abomination of the science.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.
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Language is the machine of the poet.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.
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In every age the vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues.
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No man in the world acts up to his own standard of right.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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
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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.
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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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