Macaulay Quotes & Sayings

We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison; let the vender prove it to be sanative. — Thomas B. Macaulay

The manuscript may go forth from the writer to return with a faithfulness passing the faithfulness of the boomerang or the homing pigeon. — Rose Macaulay

Nearly all novels are too long. — Rose Macaulay

We know one another's faults, virtues, catastrophes, mortifications, triumphs, rivalries, desires, and how long we can each hang by our hands to a bar. We have been banded together under pack codes and tribal laws. — Rose Macaulay

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 B. Macaulay

It's the old who need work. They've lost their spring and their zest for life, and need something to hold on to. It's all wrong, the way we arrange it - making the young work and the old sit idle. It should be the other way about. Girls and boys don't get bored with perpetual holidays; they live each moment of them hard; they would welcome the eternal Sabbath; and indeed I trust we shall all do that, as our youth is to be renewed like eagles. But old age on this earth is far too sad to do nothing in. — Rose Macaulay

Boswell is the first of biographers. — Thomas B. Macaulay

This 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. — Thomas B. Macaulay

The Puritans hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

I remember sitting one time doing 100 interviews in a day, and they're all television interviews and they're kind of - and you just sit there and they bring these people in and out, and in out. — Macaulay Culkin

Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. — George Macaulay Trevelyan

By 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. — Thomas B. Macaulay

To lunch with the important ... that should be the daily goal of those for whom life is not a playground but a ladder. — Rose Macaulay

History begins in novel and ends in essay. — Thomas B. Macaulay

In 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. — Thomas B. Macaulay

The 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? — Thomas Babington Macaulay

In 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. — Thomas B. Macaulay

News is like food: it is the cooking and serving that makes it acceptable, not the material itself. — Rose Macaulay

In the long run, the power of kindness can redeem beyond the power of force to destroy. There is a vast reservoir of kindness that we can no longer afford do disregard. — John MacAulay

Re: Robert Montgomery's Poems His writing bears the same relation to poetry which a Turkey carpet bears to a picture. There are colours in the Turkey carpet out of which a picture might be made. There are words in Mr. Montgomery's writing which, when disposed in certain orders and combinations,have made, and will make again, good poetry. But, as they now stand, they seem to be put together on principle in such a manner as to give no image of anything in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. — Thomas B. Macaulay

How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Once more the legend flourished that the number of years lived constitutes some kind of temperamental bond, so that people of the same age are many minds with but a single thought, bearing one to another a close resemblance. The young were commented on as if they were some new and just discovered species of animal life, with special qualities and habits which repaid investigation. — Rose Macaulay

No war ought ever to be undertaken but under circumstances which render all intercourse of courtesy between the combatants impossible. It is a bad thing that men should hate each other; but it is far worse that they should contract the habit of cutting one another's throats without hatred. War is never lenient but where it is wanton; when men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge: this may be bad; but it is human nature. — Thomas B. Macaulay

What 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! — Thomas Babington Macaulay

Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

The ascendancy over men's minds of the ruins of the stupendous past, the past of history, legend and myth, at once factual and fantastic, stretching back and back into ages that can but be surmised, is half-mystical in basis. The intoxication, at once so heady and so devout, is not the romantic melancholy engendered by broken towers and mouldered stones; it is the soaring of the imagination into the high empyrean where huge episodes are tangled with myths and dreams; it is the stunning impact of world history on its amazed heirs. — Rose Macaulay

The Orientals have another word for accident; it is "kismet,"
fate. — Thomas B. Macaulay

And 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? — Thomas Babington Macaulay

Office 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. — Thomas B. Macaulay

We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. — Thomas B. Macaulay

There 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 habits. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Miss my daily Mass, and have a superstitious feeling that anything may happen on the days I don't go. However, nothing in particular has. — Rose Macaulay

Sense can support herself handsomely in most countries on some eighteen pence a day; but for fantasy, planets and solar systems, will not suffice. — Thomas B. Macaulay

The position of women, that sad and well-nigh universal blot on civilizations, was never far from her mind. — Rose Macaulay

Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

To carry the spirit of peace into war is a weak and cruel policy. When an extreme case calls for that remedy which is in its own nature most violent, and which, in such cases, is a remedy only because it is violent, it is idle to think of mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothing which negotiation or submission will do better: and to act on any other principle is, not to save blood and money, but to squander them. — Thomas B. Macaulay

The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this that this was our last Revolution. — Thomas B. Macaulay

If 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. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Oh, wherefore come ye forth in triumph from the north,
With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red?
And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout?
And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread? — Thomas B. Macaulay

There's more to me, you know? I'm not Macaulay Culkin, 'Home Alone' kid. I'm Macaulay Culkin ... actor. — Macaulay Culkin

The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave. — Thomas B. Macaulay

My mother's father taught English literature. When I was about ten or eleven, I could recite Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome.' While other kids were playing pedestrian war games, I'd be Horatius keeping the bridge. — Bernie Taupin

One could do with a longer year - so much to do, so little done, alas. — Rose Macaulay

Ye diners out from whom we guard our spoons. — Thomas B. Macaulay

The impulse to ask questions is among the more primitive human lusts. — Rose Macaulay

Mere 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. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Churches are wonderful and beautiful, and they are vehicles for religion, but no Church can have more than a very little of the truth. — Rose Macaulay

I could have gone the route of a lot of these former child actors, but I didn't want that for myself. Like I said, when I was 14 years old, I decided to quit. I didn't ever want to do it again. — Macaulay Culkin

Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly do the rest. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear
O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Cruelty was the devil, and most people were, in one way or another, cruel. Tyranny, suppression, persecution, torture, slavery, war, neglect - all were cruel. The world was acid and sour with hate, fat with greed, yellow with the triumph of the strong and the rich. — Rose Macaulay

It took me ten minutes to write this very sentence. I'm no writer. This is not my calling. — Macaulay Culkin

Even Holland and Spain have been positively, though not relatively, advancing. — Thomas B. Macaulay

So they left the subject and played croquet, which is a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancor. — Rose Macaulay

Did you ever look through a microscope at a drop of pond water? You see plenty of love there. All the amoebae getting married. I presume they think it very exciting and important. We don't. — Rose Macaulay

I'm not expecting the American literary community to welcome me with open arms. To them I'm just some schmuck kid who wrote some book. — Macaulay Culkin

Many persons read and like fiction. It does not tax the intelligence and the intelligence of most of us can so ill afford taxation that we rightly welcome any reading matter which avoids this. — Rose Macaulay

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

It is a fact that, being a quick reader, apart from enabling a person to study good books such as Macaulay and Gibbon, enables a person to read a lot of bad books as well. — Antonia Fraser

Acting found me. I thought maybe I should try to find it again. We'll see. — Macaulay Culkin

Then 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. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Life is one long struggle to disinter oneself, to keep one's head above the accumulations, the ever deepening layers of objects ... which attempt to cover one over, steadily, almost irresistibly, like falling snow. — Rose Macaulay

This is the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he is profoundly ignorant. — Thomas B. Macaulay

From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness,-a system in which the two great commandments were to hate your neighbour and to love your neighbour's wife. — Thomas B. Macaulay

People who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Satire 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. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Everywhere there is a class of men who cling with fondness to whatever is ancient, and who, even when convinced by overpowering reasons that innovation would be beneficial, consent to it with many misgivings and forebodings. We find also everywhere another class of men, sanguine in hope, bold in speculation, always pressing forward, quick to discern the imperfections of whatever exists, disposed to think lightly of the risks and inconveniences which attend improvements and disposed to give every change credit for being an improvement. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

Gosh, I couldn't even talk right until I was about 6 years old or something like that. — Macaulay Culkin

When the years have all passed, there will gape the uncomfortable and unpredictable dark void of death, and into this I shall at last fall headlong, down and down and down, and the prospect of that fall, that uprooting, that rending apart of body and spirit, that taking off into so blank an unknown, drowns me in mortal fear and mortal grief. After all, life, for all its agonies of despair and loss and guilt, is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing, full of liking and of love, at times a poem and a high adventure, at times noble and at times very gay; and whatever (if anything) is to come after it, we shall not have this life again. — Rose Macaulay

In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man. — Thomas B. Macaulay

I've never thought about the ages of my readers. — David Macaulay

The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Western literature has been more influenced by the Bible than any other book. — Thomas B. Macaulay

All sorts of articles and letters appear in the papers about women. Profound questions are raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Marry? Exist? Are not their skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have they a sense of humor, of honor, of direction? Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquiries are propounded about men. — Rose Macaulay

The business of everybody is the business of nobody. — Thomas B. Macaulay

I'd made enough money by the time I was 12 to never have to work again. — Macaulay Culkin

Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors. — Thomas B. Macaulay

The Church is the handmaid of tyranny and the steady enemy of liberty. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Women have one great advantage over men. It is commonly thought that if they marry they have done enough, and need career no further. If a man marries, on the other hand, public opinion is all against him if he takes this view. — Rose Macaulay

All the child-star cliches, I've tried very hard to avoid them all. — Macaulay Culkin

God very seldom succeeds. He has very nearly everything against him, of course. — Rose Macaulay

Giving is not at all interesting; but receiving is, there is no doubt about it, delightful. — Rose Macaulay

Work is a dull thing; you cannot get away from that. The only agreeable existence is one of idleness, and that is not, unfortunately, always compatible with continuing to exist at all. — Rose Macaulay

In perseverance, in self command, in forethought, in all virtues which conduce to success in life, the Scots have never been surpassed. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Enlarged sympathy with children was one of the chief contributions made by the Victorian English to real civilization. — George Macaulay Trevelyan

The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

She was alone with beauty. She was passionately realizing the moment, its fleeting exquisiteness, its still, fragile beauty. So exquisite it was, so frail and so transitory, that she could have wept, even as she clasped it close. To savor the loveliness of moments, to bathe in them as in a wine-gold, sun-warmed sea, and then to pass on to the next - that was life. — Rose Macaulay

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

A 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. — Thomas B. Macaulay

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 Babington Macaulay

The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads. — Thomas B. Macaulay

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived. — Rose Macaulay

The last sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost - to lie to oneself. Lying to other people - that's a small thing in comparison. — Rose Macaulay

In his fierce, bold determination to see the lives of modern-day slaves up close, Benjamin Skinner reminds me of the British abolitionist of two hundred years ago, Zachary Macaulay, who once traveled on a slave ship across the Atlantic, taking notes. Skinner goes everywhere, from border crossings to brothels to bargaining sessions with dealers in human beings, to bring us this vivid, searing account of the wide network of human trafficking and servitude which spans today's globe. — Adam Hochschild

I don't mind your thinking slowly; I mind your publishing faster than you think. — Thomas B. Macaulay

I'd tell you to go to hell but I don't want to see you again. — Charles Macaulay

A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

When I have eaten mangoes, I have felt like Eve. — Rose Macaulay