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Grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
Retirement
Gentle
Grief
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Makes
Natures
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Inaction
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Spirits

More quotes by 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.
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The sweeter sound of woman's praise.
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Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!
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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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Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.
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A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night.
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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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In every age the vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues.
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That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.
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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.
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She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.
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Thus, then, stands the case. It is good, that authors should be remunerated and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good.
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All the walks of literature are infested with mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting all the distortions of their intellects and stripping the covering from all the putrid sores of their feelings.
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Satire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin poets whose works have come down to us were not mere imitators of foreign models and it is therefore the sort of composition in which they have never been excelled.
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Complete self-devotion is woman's part.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Reform, that we may preserve.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern.
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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 opinion of the great body of the reading public is very materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those who assume a right to criticize.
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Was none who would be foremost To lead such dire attack But those behind cried Forward! And those before cried Back!
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