Thomas B. Macaulay

None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.

I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.

To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. 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.

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.

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!

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?

Our judgment ripens; our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the Spring of life and the fruits of its Autumn.

The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.

But thou, through good and evil, praise and blame,_x000D_ _x000D_ Wilt not thou love me for myself alone?_x000D_ _x000D_ Yes, thou wilt love me with exceeding love,_x000D_ _x000D_ And I will tenfold all that love repay;_x000D_ _x000D_ Still smiling, though the tender may reprove,_x000D_ _x000D_ Still faithful, though the trusted may betray.

The effect of violent dislike between groups has always created an indifference to the welfare and honor of the state.

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

We must judge of a form of government by it's general tendency, not by happy accidents

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from 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.

A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.