Thomas B. Macaulay
Thomas B. Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, PCwas a British historian and Whig politician. He wrote extensively as an essayist and reviewer; his books on British history have been hailed as literary masterpieces. He was a member of the Babington family by virtue of his aunt's marriage to Thomas Babington...
life evil faithful
But thou, through good and evil, praise and blame, Wilt not thou love me for myself alone? Yes, thou wilt love me with exceeding love, And I will tenfold all that love repay; Still smiling, though the tender may reprove, Still faithful, though the trusted may betray.
knowledge knowing-everything cedars
A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.
freedom civilization democracies-have
I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.
book choices library
Books are becoming everything to me. If I had at this moment any choice in life, I would bury myself in one of those immense libraries...and never pass a waking hour without a book before me.
book blessing able
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!
country class population
To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.
morality ridiculous fit
We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
army navy gentleman
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.
estates gallery realms
The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.
rakes scholar
He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.
tides may tidy
A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.
freedom 4th-of-july learning
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.
succeed bears dignity
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.
life firsts heroic
The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets. Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second.