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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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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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The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what the well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration.
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The real object of the drama is the exhibition of human character.
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The end of government is the happiness of the people.
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By poetry we mean the art of employing of words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination the art of doing by means of words, what the painter does by means of colors.
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The upper current of society presents no pertain criterion by which we can judge of the direction in which the under current flows.
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It may be laid as an universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less.
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Even Holland and Spain have been positively, though not relatively, advancing.
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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.
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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.
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We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
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In employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, we are only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself.
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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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The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.
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The good-humor of a man elated with success often displays itself towards enemies.
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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.
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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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A beggarly people, A church and no steeple.
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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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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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