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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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In employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, we are only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself.
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How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his premises so ably, should assume his premises so foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human nature.
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It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.
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The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.
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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.
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As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.
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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.
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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.
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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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He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.
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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.
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A government cannot be wrong in punishing fraud or force, but it is almost certain to be wrong if, abandoning its legitimate function, it tells private individuals that it knows their business better than they know it themselves.
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Western literature has been more influenced by the Bible than any other book.
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