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The ascendency of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendency which naturally and properly belonged to intellectual superiority.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
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And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
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A man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who in that department succeeded pre-eminently.
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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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The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.
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Reform, that we may preserve.
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Byron owed the vast influence which he exercised over his contemporaries at least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry.
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Cut off my head, and singular I am, Cut off my tail, and plural I appear Although my middle's left, there's nothing there! What is my head cut off? A sounding sea What is my tail cut off? A rushing river And in their mingling depths I fearless play, Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.
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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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Language is the machine of the poet.
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Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.
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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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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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What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one,--and that is not only true, but identical,--that men always act from self-interest.
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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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By poetry we mean the art of employing of words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination the art of doing by means of words, what the painter does by means of colors.
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We must judge of a form of government by it's general tendency, not by happy accidents
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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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If anybody would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces, and gardens and fine dinners, and wine, and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I would not read books, I would not be a king.
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There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.
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The most beautiful object in the world, it will be allowed, is a beautiful woman.
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