Thomas Babington Macaulay
- Country : United Kingdom
- Profession : Historian and essayist
- DOB: 1800-10-25
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) was a prominent English historian, politician, and essayist. Known for his eloquent writing, he played a key role in shaping British imperial policy during the 19th century. Macaulay served in Parliament and held various governmental positions, advocating for educational and legal reforms. His most acclaimed work, “The History of England from the Accession of James II,” established him as a leading historian. Macaulay’s literary contributions and political influence left a lasting impact on Victorian society, reflecting his commitment to liberal ideals and his dedication to advancing knowledge through literature and public service.
The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers. The tax is an exceedingly bad one; it is a tax on one of the most innocent and most salutary of human pleasures; and never let us forget, that a tax on innocent pleasures is a premium on vicious pleasure
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dissent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new social evils. The truth is that the evils are, with scarcely an exception, old. That which is new is the intelligence which discerns and the humanity which remedies them
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayFirst, a man of sense would have known that a single experiment is not sufficient to establish a general rule even in sciences much less complicated than the science of government; that, since the beginning of the world, no two political experiments were ever made of which all the conditions were exactly alike; and that the only way to learn civil prudence from history is to examine and compare an immense number of cases.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIn truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad criticsf
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayA few more years will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency which once belonged to the name of Byron
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayHe had done that which could never be forgiven; he was in the grasp of one who never forgave
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayA 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
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayMere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayOnly imagine a man acting for one single day on the supposition that all his neighbors believe all that they profess, and act up to all that they believe!
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayBoth in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigor
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWe must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe history of nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best studied in works not professedly historical
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWe must succumb to the general influence of the times. No man can be of the tenth century, if he would; be must be a man of the nineteenth century
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayI shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayGenius is subject to the same laws which regulate the production of cotton and molasses
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWe never could clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popular in writing
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayA government cannot be wrong in punishing fraud or force, but it is almost certain to be wrong if, abandoning its legitimate function, it tells private individuals that it knows their business better than they know it themselves
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayOur judgment ripens; our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the Spring of life and the fruits of its Autumn
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe upper current of society presents no pertain criterion by which we can judge of the direction in which the under current flows
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayGreat minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe whole history of Christianity proves that she has little indeed to fear from persecution as a foe, but much to fear from persecution as an ally.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulaySatire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin poets whose works have come down to us were not mere imitators of foreign models; and it is therefore the sort of composition in which they have never been excelled.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayTo be a really good historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayA system in which the two great commandments are to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor’s wife
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayMen of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayA kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayAt present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished for fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayAll the walks of literature are infested with mendicants for fame, who attempt to excite our interest by exhibiting all the distortions of their intellects and stripping the covering from all the putrid sores of their feelings
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWe do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison; let the vender prove it to be sanative
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIn that temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried, in the great Abbey which has during many ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the Great Hall.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThose who seem to load the public taste are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction which it is spontaneously pursuing
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIf 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
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIt is good to be often reminded of the inconsistency of human nature, and to learn to look without wonder or disgust on the weaknesses which are found in the strongest minds
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayMore sinners are cursed at not because we despise their sins but because we envy their success at sinning
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe Church is the handmaid of tyranny and the steady enemy of liberty
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIt may be laid as an universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe ascendency of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendency which naturally and properly belonged to intellectual superiority
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayHe who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIn taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what the well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe desire of posthumous fame and the dread of posthumous reproach and execration are feelings from the influence of which scarcely any man is perfectly free, and which in many men are powerful and constant motives of action
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIt is possible to be below flattery as well as above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One who does not value real glory will not value its counterfeit
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIf 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
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThere 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
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIt has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayMan is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his beliefs to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThere is no country in Europe which is so easy to over-run as Spain; there is no country which it is more difficult to conquer
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIn Plato’s opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon’s opinion, philosophy was made for man
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayHow it chanced that a man who reasoned on his premises so ably, should assume his premises so foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human nature
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWe hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayByron owed the vast influence which he exercised over his contemporaries at least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe 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
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayI 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
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayA Grecian history, perfectly written should be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayShe thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIn the plays of Shakespeare man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayPeople crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayHe had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe effect of violent dislike between groups has always created an indifference to the welfare and honor of the state
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIn every age the vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThere 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 habit
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayI have not the smallest doubt that, if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilisation would perish; or order and property would be saved by a strong military government, and liberty would perish
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe passages in which Milton has alluded to his own circumstances are perhaps read more frequently, and with more interest, than any other lines in his poems
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe reluctant obedience of distant provinces generally costs more than it – The Territory is worth. Empires which branch out widely are often more flourishing for a little timely pruning
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThat wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThere are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayOur estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThat is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe opinion of the great body of the reading public is very materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those who assume a right to criticize
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayA history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWe 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.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIn 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
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe hearts of men are their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their eloquence
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulaySense can support herself handsomely in most countries on some eighteen pence a day; but for fantasy, planets and solar systems, will not suffice
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayI 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
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayTemple was a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThis is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayFew of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayNo particular man is necessary to the state. We may depend on it that, if we provide the country with popular institutions, those institutions will provide it with great men
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayGrief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIt is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat of government, and took little part in the strife of factions, gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine verse
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayEven Holland and Spain have been positively, though not relatively, advancing
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayMen naturally sympathize with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with pity.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayOffice of itself does much to equalize politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level; but it does bring high characters down and low characters up towards a common standard
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayMany 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
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIf anybody would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces, and gardens and fine dinners, and wine, and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I would not read books, I would not be a king
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIf ever Shakespeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayNobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayCut off my head, and singular I am, Cut off my tail, and plural I appear; Although my middle’s left, there’s nothing there! What is my head cut off? A sounding sea; What is my tail cut off? A rushing river; And in their mingling depths I fearless play, Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayGeneralization 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
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWe know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayI have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayA church is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favored and cherished.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this that this was our last Revolution
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWar is never lenient but where it is wanton; where men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge. This may be bad, but it is human nature; it is the clay as it came from the hands of the Potter
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayA man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayTo that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThere was, it is said, a criminal in Italy who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him; he changed his mind, and went to the oars
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe good-humor of a man elated with success often displays itself towards enemies
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayNothing is so galling to a people not broken in from 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
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThen none was for a party; Than all were for the state; Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great: Then lands were fairly portioned; Then spoils were fairly sold: The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayQueen Mary had a way of interrupting tattle about elopements, duels, and play debts, by asking the tattlers, very quietly yet significantly, whether they had ever read her favorite sermon – Dr. Tillotson on Evil Speaking
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayHistory distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWith the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayScotland by no means escaped the fate ordained for every country which is connected, but not incorporated, with another country of greater resources.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayLogicians 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.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWhat a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIn 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
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThose who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWhat proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one, – and that is not only true, but identical, – that men always act from self-interest
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayI would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWith respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe 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
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayTo sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWe deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayPerhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayPerhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIt is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgement used at preparatory schools in England
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayI shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThere is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayAnd to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIn employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, we are only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe perfect disinterestedness and self-devotion of which men seem incapable, but which is sometimes found in women
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayHighest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue stands Shakespeare. His variety is like the variety of nature, – endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayTurn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIn 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
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayEvery 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.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe Saviour of mankind Himself, in whose blameless life malice could find no act to impeach, has been called in question for words spoken
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayEven the law of gravitation would be brought into dispute were there a pecuniary interest involved
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayEvery generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayFree trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayMen are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWe cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all before us, and with just as much apparent reason
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayBy poetry we mean the art of employing of words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words, what the painter does by means of colors
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayPeople who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe most beautiful object in the world, it will be allowed, is a beautiful woman
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThe great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayIn perseverance, in self command, in forethought, in all virtues which conduce to success in life, the Scots have never been surpassed.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayI would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayWestern literature has been more influenced by the Bible than any other book
Author: Thomas Babington MacaulayThen 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
Author: Thomas Babington Macaulay