Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

• Temple was a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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  Tags in Letters, World, Man

• Such night in England ne’er had been, nor ne’er again shall be.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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  Tags in Again, Such

• She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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  Tags in Understands, Church, Deal

• Reform, that we may preserve.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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• Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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  Tags in Poet, Enjoy, Poetry, Perhaps, Person, Mind

• People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Power

  Tags in People, Enemies, Hopes, Law

• Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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  Tags in General, Useless

• Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the 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.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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  Tags in Government, People, Drink, Eat, Read, Birth, Wear

• Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Money

  Tags in Advertising, Except, Make

• 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.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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  Tags in Habit, People, Learned, Till, Fool, Freedom

• I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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  Tags in Poor, Rather, Read, Desire, Book, Books, Reading

• I 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.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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  Tags in Produce, Young, Satisfied, Unless

• 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.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in History, Life, Success

  Tags in Dignity, True, Place

• He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Tags in Among, Scholars

• He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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  Tags in Wonderful, Talent

• As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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  Tags in Decline, Poetry, Civilization

• And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Father, God

  Tags in Better, Man, Die

• An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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  Tags in Better

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

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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• A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

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  Tags in Infinitely, Best, Better, Good

Thomas Babington Macaulay (81)

Birth:	25th October, 1800
Death:	28th December, 1859
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Historian, Poet, Politician

About

Macaulay was the eldest child of Zachary Macaulay, a Scottish Highlander, who became a colonial governor and abolitionist and Selena Mills who was a former pupil of Hannah More. Thomas Macaulay was born in Leicestershire, England, where he was noted as a child prodigy.

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