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Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action it inspires no enthusiasm it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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More quotes by Thomas B. Macaulay

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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.
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If anybody would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces, and gardens and fine dinners, and wine, and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I would not read books, I would not be a king.
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Even Holland and Spain have been positively, though not relatively, advancing.
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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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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.
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The temple of silence and reconciliation.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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We must judge of a form of government by it's general tendency, not by happy accidents
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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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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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It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.
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Complete self-devotion is woman's part.
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She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Finesse is the best adaptation of means to circumstances.
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.
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?
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All the walks of literature are infested with mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting all the distortions of their intellects and stripping the covering from all the putrid sores of their feelings.
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I have not the smallest doubt that, if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilisation would perish or order and property would be saved by a strong military government, and liberty would perish.
Thomas B. Macaulay