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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.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
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Half-knowledge is worse than ignorance.
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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.
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This is the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he is profoundly ignorant.
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Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second.
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Beards in olden times, were the emblems of wisdom and piety.
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The Church is the handmaid of tyranny and the steady enemy of liberty.
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The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.
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A single breaker may recede but the tide is evidently coming in.
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The good-humor of a man elated with success often displays itself towards enemies.
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We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.
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No man in the world acts up to his own standard of right.
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There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen and the gentlemen were not seamen.
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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.
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Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action it inspires no enthusiasm it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.
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He had done that which could never be forgiven he was in the grasp of one who never forgave.
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In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America.
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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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A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.
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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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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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