Thomas B. Macaulay Quotes - Page 5

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• A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil terminates in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect on the whole character. The former is a local malady; the latter, constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender is lost, he too often flings the remainder of his virtue after it in despair.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Character, Evil, Despair

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• It may be laid as an universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Government, Liberty, May

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• It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One who does not value real glory will not value its counterfeit.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Real, Sycophants, Doe

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• A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  May, Tides, Tidy

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

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• The temple of silence and reconciliation.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Silence, Temples, Graves

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• Reform, that we may preserve.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Reform, May, Reformation

  Debate on the First Reform Bill, March 2, 1831.

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• I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Wish, Belief

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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

  Philosophical, Vocabulary, People

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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

  Men, Assuming, Mystery

  "The Philosophy of Natural Theology". Book by William Jackson, 1874.

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• The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Moving, Revolution, Causes

  Speech on Parliamentary Reform, 1831.

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• Power, safely defied, touches its downfall.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Power, Downfall

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• Thus, then, stands the case. It is good, that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Evil, Purpose, Sake

  "Speech on the Copyright Bill". February 5, 1841.

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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.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Mean, Class, People

  "Minute by the Hon'ble T. B. Macaulay, dated the 2nd February 1835". "Bureau of Education. Selections from Educational Records, Part I (1781-1839)" edited by H. Sharp, Reprint. Delhi: National Archives of India, www.columbia.edu. 1965.

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• The reluctant obedience of distant provinces generally costs more than it - The Territory is worth. Empires which branch out widely are often more flourishing for a little timely pruning.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Time, Cost, Pruning

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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

  Strong, Military, Order

  "The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay" edited by Thomas Pinney, Vol. 6, p. 94, 1981.

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• War is never lenient but where it is wanton; where men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge. This may be bad, but it is human nature; it is the clay as it came from the hands of the Potter.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Hate, War, Fighting

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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

  Brother, Party, Men

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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.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Art, Mean, Color

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• It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  War, Civilization, Citizens

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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

  Fashion, Taste, Seems

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• In the infancy of civilization, when our island was as savage as New Guinea, when letters and arts were still unknown to Athens, when scarcely a thatched roofed hut stood on what was later the site of Rome, this contemned people had their fenced cities and cedar palaces, their splendid Temple, their fleets of merchant ships, their schools of sacred learning, their great statesmen and soldiers, their natural philosophers, their historians and their poets.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Art, School, Islands

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• What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Book, Blessing, Able

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• He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance to him.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Children, Poetry, Mind

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• Western literature has been more influenced by the Bible than any other book.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Book, Literature, Western

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• Those who have read history with discrimination know the fallacy of those panegyrics and invectives which represent individuals as effecting great moral and intellectual revolutions, subverting established systems, and imprinting a new character on their age. The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd suppose.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Character, Mean, Greatness

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