Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

1800–1859 England

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (25 October 1800 – 28 December 1859) was a nineteenth century British poet, historian and Whig politician.

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Also known as: Lord Macaulay, Macaulay, Macaulay, Thomas Babington, T. B. Macaulay, T.B. Macaulay, Thomas B. Macaulay

Random Thomas Babington Macaulay quote

143 quotes

There you [Sir Robert Peel] sit, doing penance for the disingenuousness of years.

The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.

And the chief-justice was rich, quiet, and infamous.

Warren Hastings (1841)

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.

John Dryden', The Edinburgh Review (1828)

We must judge of a form of government by its general tendency, not by happy accidents.

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.

No 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.

He [Temple] was a man of the world among men of letters, a man of letters among men of the world.

Let no man stop to plunder,
But slay, and slay, and slay;
The gods who live forever
Are on our side to-day.

Lays of Ancient Rome (1842)

Every schoolboy knows who imprisoned Montezuma, and who strangled Atahualpa.

Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.

The sweeter sound of woman's praise.

In all ages a chief cause of the intestine disorders of states has been that the natural distribution of power and the legal distribution of power have not corresponded with each other.

There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles II. But the seamen were not gentlemen, and the gentlemen were not seamen.

History of England (1849)

And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?

Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war,
And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre.

Night sank upon the dusky beach, and on the purple sea,
Such night in England ne’er had been, nor e’er again shall be.

The Armada (1833)

She [the Catholic Church] thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.

At once on all her stately gates arose the answering fires;
At once the wild alarum clashed from all her reeling spires.

The Armada (1833)

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Babington Macaulay (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.