Thomas B. Macaulay
Thomas B. Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, PCwas a British historian and Whig politician. He wrote extensively as an essayist and reviewer; his books on British history have been hailed as literary masterpieces. He was a member of the Babington family by virtue of his aunt's marriage to Thomas Babington...
latin book years
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.
mother may dear-friend
In after-life you may have friends--fond, dear friends; but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows.
children poetry littles
He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.
men may politics
A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read. He may be very ill informed respecting a question: all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate; but speak he must. And if he is a man of ability, of tact, and of intrepidity, he soon finds that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully.
school political doctrine
Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school--its abstract doctrines for the initiated; its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables, for the vulgar.
party men looks
Men naturally sympathize with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with pity.
power downfall
Power, safely defied, touches its downfall.
sunday should-have people
If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.
counting sects
The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.
latin selfishness latin-proverb
I am always nearest to myself," says the Latin proverb.
greatness men age
It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.
greatness mind pay
Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.
fashion age generations
Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors.
want motive cant
What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant.