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What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
Cant
Motive
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Society

More quotes by Thomas B. Macaulay

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Oh, wherefore come ye forth in triumph from the north, With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red? And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout? And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?
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Complete self-devotion is woman's part.
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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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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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With respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Language is the machine of the poet.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.
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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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.
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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We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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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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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The good-humor of a man elated with success often displays itself towards enemies.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Finesse is the best adaptation of means to circumstances.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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We must succumb to the general influence of the times. No man can be of the tenth century, if he would be must be a man of the nineteenth century.
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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay