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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.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
Seems
Load
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Merely
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Spontaneously
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More quotes by 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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Was none who would be foremost To lead such dire attack But those behind cried Forward! And those before cried Back!
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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With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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In every age the vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Then none was for a party Than all were for the state Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great: Then lands were fairly portioned Then spoils were fairly sold: The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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!
Thomas B. Macaulay
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He [Charles II] was utterly without ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the administration.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
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
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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A church is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favored and cherished.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Both in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigor.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Language is the machine of the poet.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Western literature has been more influenced by the Bible than any other book.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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The end of government is the happiness of the people.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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[I can] scarcely write upon mathematics or mathematicians. Oh for words to express my abomination of the science.
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