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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.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
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More quotes by Thomas B. Macaulay

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People who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants.
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Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.
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The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.
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We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.
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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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In the modern languages there was not, six hundred years ago, a single volume which is now read. The library of our profound scholar must have consisted entirely of Latin books.
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Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school--its abstract doctrines for the initiated its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables, for the vulgar.
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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.
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Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.
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In the plays of Shakespeare man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn.
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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.
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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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Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay but 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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The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.
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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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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England.
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.
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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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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