The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
Category Archive: Thomas Babington Macaulay
A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
Such night in England ne’er had been, nor ne’er again shall be.
We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.
Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!
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.
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.
That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.