Thomas B. Macaulay

(220 votes)   He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable.

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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(138 votes)   The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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(105 votes)   To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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(100 votes)   Generalization 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.

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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(100 votes)   There 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.

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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(93 votes)   Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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(75 votes)   A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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(72 votes)   Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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(68 votes)   The 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.

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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(66 votes)   He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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(65 votes)   She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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(63 votes)   A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf... For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then be withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties.

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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(62 votes)   A church is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favored and cherished.

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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(46 votes)   Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical.

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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(45 votes)   The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

Thomas B. Macaulay
1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian

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