Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

208 Sourced Quotes

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
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 Babington Macaulay
The Saviour of mankind Himself, in whose blameless life malice could find no act to impeach, has been called in question for words spoken.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
In an enlightened age there will be much intelligence, much science, much philosophy, abundance of just classification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good ones - but little poetry.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
No particular man is necessary to the state. We may depend on it that, if we provide the country with popular institutions, those institutions will provide it with great men.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the production of cotton and molasses.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
The hearts of men are their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their eloquence.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
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 Babington Macaulay
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 Babington Macaulay
It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat of government, and took little part in the strife of factions, gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine verse.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
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 Babington Macaulay
It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
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 Babington Macaulay
There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him; he changed his mind, and went to the oars.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
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 Babington Macaulay
At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished for fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
Men naturally sympathize with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with pity.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
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 Babington Macaulay
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 Babington Macaulay
Only imagine a man acting for one single day on the supposition that all his neighbors believe all that they profess, and act up to all that they believe!

Thomas Babington Macaulay
Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!

Thomas Babington Macaulay
All the walks of literature are infested with mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting all the distortions of their intellects and stripping the covering from all the putrid sores of their feelings.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
We are free, we are civilised, to little purpose, if we grudge to any portion of the human race an equal measure of freedom and civilisation.

Thomas Babington Macaulay