The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature; and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed.… — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents. — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as… — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions. — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
Re: Robert Montgomery's Poems His writing bears the same relation to poetry which a Turkey carpet bears to a picture. There are colours in the Turkey carpet out of which a picture might be made. There are words in Mr. Montgomery's writing which, when disposed in certain orders and combinations,have made, and will make again, good poetry. But, as they… — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share
Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue stands Shakespeare. His variety is like the variety of nature,--endless diversity, scarcely… — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
The most beautiful object in the world, it will be allowed, is a beautiful woman. — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
The passages in which Milton has alluded to his own circumstances are perhaps read more frequently, and with more interest, than any other lines… — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
Oh, wherefore come ye forth in triumph from the north, With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red? And wherefore doth… — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected in the Sanskrit language is less valuable… — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
Ambrose Phillips . . . who had the honor of bringing into fashion a species of composition which has been called, after his name, Namby Pamby. — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
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… — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share
