Thomas Babington Macaulay quotes - page 2

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor. (Thomas Babington Macaulay)
We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Reform, that we may preserve. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Was none who would be foremost To lead such dire attack; But those behind cried, "Forward!" And those before cried, "Back!" View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Ye diners-out from whom we guard our spoons. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Oh! wherefore come ye forth in triumph from the north, With your hands and your feet and your raiment all red? And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout? And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread? View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
The Chief Justice was rich, quiet, and infamous. (Thomas Babington Macaulay)
The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
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. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
We hardly know an instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking and so grotesque as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stocking, half Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verses in the other. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man!-To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion! To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity; to be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries! View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
The sweeter sound of woman's praise. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular. (Thomas Babington Macaulay)
A man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected; a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who in that department succeeded pre-eminently. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
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. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thus, then, stands the case. It is good, that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good. View quote
Thomas Babington Macaulay