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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.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
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More quotes by Thomas B. Macaulay

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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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Finesse is the best adaptation of means to circumstances.
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Cut off my head, and singular I am, Cut off my tail, and plural I appear Although my middle's left, there's nothing there! What is my head cut off? A sounding sea What is my tail cut off? A rushing river And in their mingling depths I fearless play, Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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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Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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People who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what the well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration.
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Both in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigor.
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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At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished for fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue stands Shakespeare. His variety is like the variety of nature,--endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity.
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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In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.
Thomas B. Macaulay