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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.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
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Half-knowledge is worse than ignorance.
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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.
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It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.
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We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.
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The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this that this was our last Revolution.
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Western literature has been more influenced by the Bible than any other book.
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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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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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The sweeter sound of woman's praise.
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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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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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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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