Thomas B. Macaulay Quotes - Page 6

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• If ever Shakespeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Imagination, Rant, Ifs

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• If any person had told the Parliament which met in terror and perplexity after the crash of 1720 that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams, that the annual revenue would equal the principal of that debt which they considered an intolerable burden, that for one man of

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Dream, Men, Progress

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• We must succumb to the general influence of the times. No man can be of the tenth century, if he would; be must be a man of the nineteenth century.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Men, Would Be, Influence

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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.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Christian, Fiction, Example

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• What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Want, Motive, Cant

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• Beards in olden times, were the emblems of wisdom and piety.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Beard, Emblems, Piety

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• Facts are the mere dross of history. It is from the abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent among them, like gold in the ore, that the mass derives its whole value; and the precious particles are generally combined with the baser in such a manner that the separation is a task of the utmost difficulty.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Lying, History, Gold

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• The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Drama, Character, Sight

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• He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Rakes, Scholar

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• Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Strong, Men, Atheism

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• So true it is, that nature has caprices which art cannot imitate.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Art, Nature, Caprice

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• We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Ridiculous, Morality, Fit

  "On Moore's Life of Lord Byron" by Thomas B. Macaulay, 1830.

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• Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the production of cotton and molasses.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Law, Genius, Cotton

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• There is no country in Europe which is so easy to over-run as Spain; there is no country which it is more difficult to conquer.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Running, Country, Europe

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• Cut off my head, and singular I am, Cut off my tail, and plural I appear; Although my middle's left, there's nothing there! What is my head cut off? A sounding sea; What is my tail cut off? A rushing river; And in their mingling depths I fearless play, Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Cutting, Lakes, Sea

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• Satire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin poets whose works have come down to us were not mere imitators of foreign models; and it is therefore the sort of composition in which they have never been excelled.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Latin, Poet, Satire

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• With respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Atheism, Doctrine, Philosopher

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• Office of itself does much to equalize politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level; but it does bring high characters down and low characters up towards a common standard.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Character, Mean, Office

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• The study of the properties of numbers, Plato tells us, habituates the mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and raises us above the material universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this study, not that they may be able to buy or sell, not that they may qualify themselves to be shopkeepers or travelling merchants, but that they may learn to withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this visible and tangible world, and to fix them on the immutable essences of things.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Plato, Essence, Numbers

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• To be a really good historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Intellectual, Distinction, Historian

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• A perfect historian must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make his narrative affecting and picturesque; yet he must control it so absolutely as to content himself with the materials which he finds, and to refrain from supplying deficiencies by additions of his own. He must be a profound and ingenious reasoner; yet he must possess sufficient self-command to abstain from casting his facts in the mould of his hypothesis.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Powerful, Self, Profound

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• Grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Retirement, Grief, Meditation

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• In perseverance, in self command, in forethought, in all virtues which conduce to success in life, the Scots have never been surpassed.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Perseverance, War, Self

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• He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Love, Feet, Deformity

  "The Life of Lord Byron". Book by Thomas Moore, 1831.

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• A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Knowledge, Knowing Everything, Cedars

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

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