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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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Thomas B. Macaulay
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More quotes by Thomas B. Macaulay

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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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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?
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.
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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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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A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
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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The English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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A beggarly people, A church and no steeple.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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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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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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay