Thomas B. Macaulay

A beggarly people, A church and no steeple.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

Language is the machine of the poet.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

Everybody's business is nobody's business.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

The sweeter sound of woman's praise.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

Finesse is the best adaptation of means to circumstances.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

The chief-justice was rich, quiet, and infamous.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

Every sect clamors for toleration when it is down.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

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

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

— Thomas B. Macaulay

In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

No man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

Ambrose Phillips . . . who had the honor of bringing into fashion a species of composition which has been called, after…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

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

— Thomas B. Macaulay

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

— Thomas B. Macaulay

A system in which the two great commandments are to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

Men naturally sympathize with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

Satire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin poets whose works have come down to us were not…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

All the walks of literature are infested with mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting all the distortions…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

He [Charles II] was utterly without ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

By poetry we mean the art of employing of words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination;…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man!-To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim… If, like those of Rochefoucault,…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

The doctrine which, from the very first origin of religious dissensions, has been held by bigots of all sects, when condensed into…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

A perfect historian must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make his narrative affecting and picturesque; yet he must control it so…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

To carry the spirit of peace into war is a weak and cruel policy. When an extreme case calls for that remedy…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

Half-knowledge is worse than ignorance.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

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

— Thomas B. Macaulay

Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

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

— Thomas B. Macaulay

The temple of silence and reconciliation.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

Power, safely defied, touches its downfall.

— Thomas B. Macaulay

How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old.

— Thomas B. Macaulay