Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay was a British historian, poet and Whig politician who served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and as the Paymaster General between 1846 and 1848. He is best known for his The History of England, a seminal example of Whig history which expressed Macaulay's belief in the inevitability of sociopolitical progress and has been widely commended
"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?"
"The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion."
"Ye diners-out from whom we guard our spoons."
"Soon fades the spell, soon comes the night: Say will it not be then the same, Whether we played the black or white, Whether we lost or won the game?"
"Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil."
"The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm."
"That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy."
"Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular."
"The dust and silence of the upper shelf."
"Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,—wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,—there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens."
"As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines."
"Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war, And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre."
