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… — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
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… — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
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… — Thomas B. Macaulay Copy Share Image
