Thomas B. Macaulay Quotes - Page 3

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• Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Future, Age, Acquisition

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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

  Men, Self, Humanity

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Men, Thinking, Class

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• No man in the world acts up to his own standard of right.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Men, World, Standards

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• In after-life you may have friends--fond, dear friends; but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Mother, May, Dear Friend

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• The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Mean, Poetry, Understanding

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• If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Sunday, Should Have, People

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• Books are becoming everything to me. If I had at this moment any choice in life, I would bury myself in one of those immense libraries...and never pass a waking hour without a book before me.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Book, Choices, Library

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• To carry the spirit of peace into war is a weak and cruel policy. When an extreme case calls for that remedy which is in its own nature most violent, and which, in such cases, is a remedy only because it is violent, it is idle to think of mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothing which negotiation or submission will do better: and to act on any other principle is, not to save blood and money, but to squander them.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Peace, War, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Humor, Government, People

  16 Copy quote

• I am always nearest to myself," says the Latin proverb.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Latin, Selfishness, Latin Proverb

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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.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Judging, Society, Flow

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• Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Men, Auditors, Sophistry

  "Essay, On the Athenian Orators" as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations, p. 137, 1922.

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• Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Greatness, Mind, Pay

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• The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Men, Logic, Tendencies

  7 Copy quote

• History distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Historical, Essentials, Human Nature

  John Morley, Thomas B. Macaulay (2016). “Machiavelli : the Founder of the Political”, p.66, Editions Le Mono

  7 Copy quote

• If anybody would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces, and gardens and fine dinners, and wine, and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I would not read books, I would not be a king.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Beautiful, Kings, Book

  15 Copy quote

• The perfect disinterestedness and self-devotion of which men seem incapable, but which is sometimes found in women.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Men, Self, Perfect

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• The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature; and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected; but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  History, Forever, Mind

  John Morley, Thomas B. Macaulay (2016). “Machiavelli : the Founder of the Political”, p.94, Editions Le Mono

  7 Copy quote

• There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Government, Community, Liberty

  "Southey's Colloquies on Society". Book by Thomas B. Macaulay, 1830.

  7 Copy quote

• Everybody's business is nobody's business.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Business

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations". Compiled by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt and Kate Louise Roberts, 1922.

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• An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Acres, Earth, Utopia

  'Essays Contributed to the 'Edinburgh Review" (1843) vol. 2 'Lord Bacon'

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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.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  School, Political, Doctrine

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• We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Revolution, Violent, Outrage

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• Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Country, Blessing, Government

  "Essay on Mitford's History of Greece" by Thomas B. Macaulay, 1824.

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