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That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
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More quotes by 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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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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The temple of silence and reconciliation.
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Grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.
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Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.
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What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man!-To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion! To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity to be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries!
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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The end of government is the happiness of the people.
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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I am always nearest to myself, says the Latin proverb.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical.
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The Orientals have another word for accident it is kismet,--fate.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Every sect clamors for toleration when it is down.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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It may be laid as an universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less.
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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Ambrose Phillips . . . who had the honor of bringing into fashion a species of composition which has been called, after his name, Namby Pamby.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Language is the machine of the poet.
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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In employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, we are only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself.
Thomas B. Macaulay