Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay: Trending quotes

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay: 202 quotes2 likes

“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.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

Vol. I, ch. 2
History of England (1849–1861)

“A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

Southey's Colloquies on Society (1830)

“Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

On Machiavelli (1827)

“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.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

On John Dryden (1828)

“We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

On Moore’s Life of Lord Byron (1830)

“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.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

On Fredrick the Great (1842)

“We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

On Milton (1825)

“Wherever literature consoles sorrow or assuages pain; wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,—there is exhibited in its noblest form the immortal influence of Athens.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

Essay on Mitford's History of Greece (1824)

“In 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.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

On Warren Hastings (1841)

“His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

On John Dryden (1828)

“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!”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

On Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1831)

“Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

On Milton (1825)

“Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war,
And be your oriflamme today the helmet of Navarre.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

Ivry: A Song of the Huguenots http://www.bartleby.com/246/76.html, l. 29 (1824)

“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.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_commons_indiagovt_1833.html#13
Attributed

“The dust and silence of the upper shelf.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

On Milton (1825)

“"Oh, Tiber! Father Tiber!
To whom the Romans pray,
A Roman's life, a Roman's arms,
Take thou in charge this day!"
So he spake, and speaking sheathed
The good sword by his side,
And with his harness on his back,
Plunged headlong in the tide.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay book Lays of Ancient Rome

Horatius, st. 59
Lays of Ancient Rome (1842)

“Ye diners-out from whom we guard our spoons.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

Political Georgics (June 29, 1831)

“The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

citation needed <br class="br">The earliest quotations of this give it as anonymous or unknown author. https://books.google.com/books?id=hPIsAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA321&dq=%22what+he+would+do+if+he+knew+it+would+never+be+found+out%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMIlvi0prz_xwIVTwaSCh0hVwX5#v=onepage&q=%22what%20he%20would%20do%20if%20he%20knew%20it%20would%20never%20be%20found%20out%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=i2MPAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA16-IA71&dq=%22what+he+would+do+if+he+knew+it+would+never+be+found+out%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIkMmp8rz_xwIV1BGSCh25lAO0#v=onepage&q=%22what%20he%20would%20do%20if%20he%20knew%20it%20would%20never%20be%20found%20out%22&f=false <br class="br">Attributed

“These be the great Twin Brethren
To whom the Dorians pray.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

The Battle of Lake Regillus; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“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.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

On John Dryden (1828)