Thomas B. Macaulay
The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what the well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration.Collection: Moving
He [Charles II] was utterly without ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the administration.Collection: Business
It was before Deity embodied in a human form walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of the synagogue, and the doubts of the academy, and the pride of the portico, and the fasces of the lictor, and the swords of thirty legions were humbled in the dust.Collection: Pride
A church is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favored and cherished.Collection: Religion
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.Collection: Real
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it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then be withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties.Collection: Dust
The whole history of Christianity proves that she has little indeed to fear from persecution as a foe, but much to fear from persecution as an ally.Collection: Allies
The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.Collection: Counting
The sweeter sound of woman's praise.Collection: Sound
The Orientals have another word for accident; it is "kismet,"--fate.Collection: Fate
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.Collection: Art
He had done that which could never be forgiven; he was in the grasp of one who never forgave.Collection: History
It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat of government, and took little part in the strife of factions, gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine verse.Collection: Distance
A beggarly people, A church and no steeple.Collection: People
The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.Collection: Mind
Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasonings.Collection: Spring
If ever Shakespeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along.Collection: Imagination
Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue stands Shakespeare. His variety is like the variety of nature,--endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity.Collection: Mean
We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison; let the vender prove it to be sanative.Collection: Thinking
We must judge of a form of government by it's general tendency, not by happy accidentsCollection: Government
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.Collection: Inspire
There are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse.Collection: Country
The impenetrable stupidity of Prince George (son-in-law of James II) served his turn. It was his habit, when any news was told him, to exclaim, "Est il possible?"-"Is it possible?"Collection: Stupid
Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second.Collection: Equal
How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old.Collection: Bridges
When the great Kepler bad at length discovered the harmonic laws that regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed: "Whether my discoveries will be read by posterity or by my contemporaries is a matter that concerns them more than me. I may well be contented to wait one century for a reader, when God Himself, during so many thousand years, has waited for an observer like myself.Collection: Discovery
At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished for fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling.Collection: Country
The English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good.Collection: Trust
He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.Collection: Children
Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.Collection: Imagination
In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man.Collection: Plato
I have seen the hippopotamus, both asleep and awake; and I can assure you that, awake or asleep, he is the ugliest of the works of God.Collection: Religion
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.Collection: Fashion
A dominant religion is never ascetic.Collection: Dominant
With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.Collection: Learning
The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.Collection: Pain
A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil terminates in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect on the whole character. The former is a local malady; the latter, constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender is lost, he too often flings the remainder of his virtue after it in despair.Collection: Character
It may be laid as an universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Peace
It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One who does not value real glory will not value its counterfeit.Collection: Real
The temple of silence and reconciliation.Collection: Silence
I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.Collection: Wish
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.Collection: Philosophical
How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his premises so ably, should assume his premises so foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human nature.Collection: Men
The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.Collection: Moving
Power, safely defied, touches its downfall.Collection: Power