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Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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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?
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In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.
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A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.
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It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.
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Even Holland and Spain have been positively, though not relatively, advancing.
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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!
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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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Temple was a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.
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The Church is the handmaid of tyranny and the steady enemy of liberty.
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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.
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The perfect disinterestedness and self-devotion of which men seem incapable, but which is sometimes found in women.
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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.
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In perseverance, in self command, in forethought, in all virtues which conduce to success in life, the Scots have never been surpassed.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.
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I am always nearest to myself, says the Latin proverb.
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay