Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

And broader still became the blaze, and louder still the din, As fast from every village round the horse came spurring in; And eastward straight from wild Blackheath the warlike errand went, And roused in many an ancient hall the gallant …

At once on all her stately gates arose the answering fires; At once the wild alarum clashed from all her reeling spires.

The sentinel on Whitehall gate looked forth into the night.

Night sank upon the dusky beach, and on the purple sea, Such night in England ne’er had been, nor e’er again shall be.

Attend, all ye who list to hear our noble England’s praise; I tell of the thrice famous deeds she wrought in ancient days.

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.

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked.

A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth, as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink, and wear.

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

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.

We know that India cannot have a free Government. But she may have the next best thing,—a firm and impartial despotism.

He [William Temple] was merely a man of lively parts and quick observation,—a man of the world amongst men of letters,—a man of letters amongst men of the world.

An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia. The smallest actual good is better than the most magnificent promises of impossibilities.

It is our deliberate opinion that the French Revolution, in spite of all its crimes and follies, was a great blessing to mankind.

The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little. Serious business was a trifle to him, and trifles were his serious business.

A life of action, if it is to be useful, must be a life of compromise. But speculation admits of no compromise. A public-man is often under the necessity of consenting to measures which he dislikes, lest he should endanger the success of …

We believe it to be a rule without an exception, that the violence of a revolution corresponds to the degree of misgovemment which has produced that revolution.

In all ages a chief cause of the intestine disorders of states has been that the natural distribution of power and the legal distribution of power have not corresponded with each other.

What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion! To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only …

We have seen that the true source of the power of demagogues is the obstinacy of rulers and that a liberal Government makes a conservative people.

The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this Bill should be rejected, I pray to God that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing regret, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, …

Reform, that you may preserve.