Quotes by Thomas B. Macaulay

Thomas B. Macaulay

American essayist and historian

Alive from: 1800-1859

Category: History and sociology

Quotes 1 till 15 of 30.

• Thomas B. Macaulay

  

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  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 and power.

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

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  A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf... For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then be withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties.

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  A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.

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

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  And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?

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  As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

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  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.

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  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.

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  He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable.

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  He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.

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

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  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.

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  Men of great conversational powers almost universally practice a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors.

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  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.