Famous Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotations

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"The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"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."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the Gate: To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"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."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the 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."
by 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."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"Charles V. said that a man who knew four languages was worth four men; and Alexander the Great so valued learning, that he used to say he was more indebted to Aristotle for giving him knowledge that, than his father Philip for giving him life."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"Time advances: facts accumulate; doubts arise. Faint glimpses of truth begin to appear, and shine more and more unto the perfect day. The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn. They are bright, while the level below is still in darkness. But soon the light, which at first illuminated only the loftiest eminences, descends on the plain, and penetrates to the deepest valley. First come hints, then fragments of systems, then defective systems, then complete and harmonious systems. The sound opinion, held for a time by one bold speculator, becomes the opinion of a small minority, of a strong minority, of a majority of mankind. Thus, the great progress goes on."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"If any person had told the Parliament which met in terror and perplexity after the crash of 1720 that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams, that the annual revenue would equal the principal of that debt which they considered an intolerable burden, that for one man of"
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"And she (the Roman Catholic Church) may still exist in undiminished vigor, when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"'To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late...."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fi..."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
"The English Bible—a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty..."
by Thomas Babington Macaulay


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