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...
army navy gentleman
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.
estates gallery realms
The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.
rakes scholar
He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.
tides may tidy
A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.
freedom 4th-of-july learning
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.
succeed bears dignity
I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.
life firsts heroic
The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets. Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second.
men auditors sophistry
Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors.
people church steeples
A beggarly people, A church and no steeple.
pride people achievement
People who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants.
revolution violent outrage
We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary.
mind littles little-minds
The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.
future age use
Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages.
writing order turkeys
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 the Turkey carpet out of which a picture might be made. There are words in Mr. Montgomery's writing which, when disposed in certain orders and combinations,have made, and will make again, good poetry. But, as they now stand, they seem to be put together on principle in such a manner as to give no image of anything in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.