Top 180 Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

52. “The temple of silence and reconciliation.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

53. “With respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

54. “The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

55. “I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

56. “Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

57. “What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one, – and that is not only true, but identical, – that men always act from self-interest.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

58. “In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

59. “Then none was for a party; Than all were for the state; Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great: Then lands were fairly portioned; Then spoils were fairly sold: The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

60. “What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

61. “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

62. “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

63. “Queen Mary had a way of interrupting tattle about elopements, duels, and play debts, by asking the tattlers, very quietly yet significantly, whether they had ever read her favorite sermon – Dr. Tillotson on Evil Speaking.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

64. “With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

65. “History distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

66. “Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

67. “The good-humor of a man elated with success often displays itself towards enemies.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

68. “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

69. “Complete self-devotion is woman’s part.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

70. “War is never lenient but where it is wanton; where men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge. This may be bad, but it is human nature; it is the clay as it came from the hands of the Potter.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

71. “To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

72. “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

73. “The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this that this was our last Revolution.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

74. “A church is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favored and cherished.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

75. “I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

76. “The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

77. “Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion 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

78. “The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

79. “Cut off my head, and singular I am, Cut off my tail, and plural I appear; Although my middle’s left, there’s nothing there! What is my head cut off? A sounding sea; What is my tail cut off? A rushing river; And in their mingling depths I fearless play, Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

80. “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

81. “Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

82. “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

83. “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

84. “Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

85. “Office of itself does much to equalize politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level; but it does bring high characters down and low characters up towards a common standard.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

86. “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

87. “Even Holland and Spain have been positively, though not relatively, advancing.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

88. “Grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

89. “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

90. “Language is the machine of the poet.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

91. “Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

92. “This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

93. “Temple was a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

94. “I have seen the hippopotamus, both asleep and awake; and I can assure you that, awake or asleep, he is the ugliest of the works of God.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

95. “Sense can support herself handsomely in most countries on some eighteen pence a day; but for fantasy, planets and solar systems, will not suffice.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

96. “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

97. “The English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

98. “The hearts of men are their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their eloquence.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

99. “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

100. “That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay