Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

208 Sourced Quotes

It was before Deity embodied in a human form walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of the synagogue, and the doubts of the academy, and the pride of the portico, and the fasces of the lictor, and the swords of thirty legions were humbled in the dust.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
It is good to be often reminded of the inconsistency of human nature, and to learn to look without wonder or disgust on the weaknesses which are found in the strongest minds.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
Poetry effects its purpose most completely in a dark age. As the light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of certainty become more and more definite, and the shades of probability more and more distinct, the hues and lineaments of the phantoms which it calls up grow fainter and fainter.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets. Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second.

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

Thomas Babington Macaulay
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.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgement used at preparatory schools in England.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
Bishop Watson compares a geologist to a gnat mounted on an elephant, and laying down theories as to the whole internal structure of the vast animal from the phenomena of the hide. The comparison is unjust to the geologist.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
The most beautiful object in the world, it will be allowed, is a beautiful woman.

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

Thomas Babington Macaulay
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 Babington Macaulay
A few more years will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency which once belonged to the name of Byron.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
Scotland by no means escaped the fate ordained for every country which is connected, but not incorporated, with another country of greater resources.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
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 Babington Macaulay
As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
The opinion of the great body of the reading public is very materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those who assume a right to criticize.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
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 Babington Macaulay
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 Babington Macaulay
A government cannot be wrong in punishing fraud or force, but it is almost certain to be wrong if, abandoning its legitimate function, it tells private individuals that it knows their business better than they know it themselves.

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

Thomas Babington Macaulay
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.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
In the modern languages there was not, six hundred years ago, a single volume which is now read. The library of our profound scholar must have consisted entirely of Latin books.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim.... If, like those of Rochefoucault, it be sparkling and whimsical, it may make an excellent motto for an essay. But few, indeed, of the many wise apophthegms which have been uttered from the time of the Seven Sages of Greece to that of Poor Richard have prevented a single foolish action.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all before us, and with just as much apparent reason.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
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 Babington Macaulay
The whole history of Christianity proves that she has little indeed to fear from persecution as a foe, but much to fear from persecution as an ally.

Thomas Babington Macaulay