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Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
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More quotes by Thomas B. Macaulay

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Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions.
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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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The English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good.
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It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England.
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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.
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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.
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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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A Grecian history, perfectly written should be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts.
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Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.
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He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.
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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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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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Only imagine a man acting for one single day on the supposition that all his neighbors believe all that they profess, and act up to all that they believe!
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Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!
Thomas B. Macaulay
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With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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In the plays of Shakespeare man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn.
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The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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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[I can] scarcely write upon mathematics or mathematicians. Oh for words to express my abomination of the science.
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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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