Onuigbo Macaulay Quotes

Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the Gate: To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his gods, ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

You may, for instance, inquire of a popular preacher, or any one else, who denounces his countrymen as "pagan" (as speakers, and even Bishops, at religious gatherings have been known to do) what, exactly, he means by this word, and you will find that he means irreligious, and is apparently oblivious of the fact that pagans were and are, in their village simplicity, the most religious persons who have ever flourished, having more gods to the square mile then the Christian or any other Church has ever possessed or desired, and paying these gods more devout and more earnest devotion than you will meet even among Anglo-Catholics in congress. To be pagan may not be very intelligent; it is rustic and superstitious, but it is at least religious. Yet you will hear the word "pagan" flung loosely about for "irreligious", or sometimes as meaning joyous, material and comfort-loving, whereas the simple pagans walked the earth full of what is called holy awe and that mystic faith in unseen powers which is the antithesis of materialism, and gloomy with apprehension of the visitations of their horrid and vindictive gods; and, though no doubt, like all men, they loved comfort, they only obtained, just as we do, as much of that as they could afford. ~ Rose Macaulay

I don't mind if somebody comes up to me and shakes my hand, but if I'm in the middle of a restaurant and somebody asks me for a picture, I can be a jerk and say no, or I can say yes and draw more attention to myself, which is exactly the opposite of what I want. ~ Macaulay Culkin

All the child-star cliches, I've tried very hard to avoid them all. ~ Macaulay Culkin

I lead a simple life. I feed the fish. I walk the dogs. I cook dinner. Occasionally I take a meeting. ~ Macaulay Culkin

I am a collection of thoughts and memories and likes and dislikes. I am the things that have happened to me and the sum of everything I've ever done. I am the clothes I wear on my back. I am every place and every person and every object I have ever come across. I am a bag of bones stuck to a very large rock spinning a thousand miles an hour. ~ Macaulay Culkin

The English Bible - a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power. ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

We may say that all ages are dangerous to all people, in this dangerous life we live. But the thirties are a specially dangerous time for women. They have outlived the shyness and restraints of girlhood, and not attained to the caution and discretion of middle age. They are reckless, and consciously or unconsciously on the lookout for adventure. They see ahead of them the end of youth, and that quickens their pace. ~ Rose Macaulay

To be a really good historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

One day I shall write a little book of conduct myself, and I shall call it Social Problems of the Unsociable. And the root problem, beneath a hundred varying manifestions, is How to Escape. How to escape, that is, at those times, be they few or frequent, when you want to keep yourself to yourself. ~ Rose Macaulay

Another sad comestive truth is that the best foods are the products of infinite and wearying trouble. The trouble need not be taken by the consumer, but someone, ever since the Fall, has had to take it. ~ Rose Macaulay

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. ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

The very utterness of the crash and ruin, the desperation of the case, might be its hope. On ruins one can begin to build. Anyhow, looking out from ruins one clearly sees; there are no obstructing walls. ~ Rose Macaulay

A lot of people meet me and they're like, 'Why aren't you crazy?' ~ Macaulay Culkin

The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the Revolution of 1688 is this that this was our last Revolution. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

I do have a family, and I do have friends, and so-called friends, and acquaintances, and many other people I see only around Christmas time. Maybe they could vouch for me. Maybe they could testify to my existence and save a part of me that thinks I'm no better than a bag of potato chips. ~ Macaulay Culkin

In 1828 the British historian Macaulay dubbed the press gallery in Parliament a 'fourth estate' of the realm. Today the news media appear to have become the first estate able to topple monarchs and turn Parliament into a talking shop which ceases to exist if journalists turn their backs. ~ Ian Hargreaves

We know one another's faults, virtues, catastrophes, mortifications, triumphs, rivalries, desires, and how long we can each hang by our hands to a bar. We have been banded together under pack codes and tribal laws. ~ Rose Macaulay

I can remember wondering as a child if I were a young Macaulay or Ruskin and secretly deciding that I was. My infant mind even was bitter with those who insisted on regarding me as a normal child and not as a prodigy. ~ W.N.P. Barbellion

As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

No man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

Cut off my head, and singular I am, Cut off my tail, and plural I appear; Although my middle's left, there's nothing there! What is my head cut off? A sounding sea; What is my tail cut off? A rushing river; And in their mingling depths I fearless play, Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

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. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

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. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

[Religion is a] primitive insurance against disaster ... Originally religion was merely a function of the self-preservative instinct. Offer sacrifices to the gods and save your crops. And even Christianity, after all, insures heavily against the flaws in this life by belief in another. ~ Rose Macaulay

Thus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

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! ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

The chief-justice was rich, quiet, and infamous. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

You should always believe what you read in the newspapers, for that makes them more interesting. ~ Rose Macaulay

To be prejudiced is the privilege of the thinking human being ... The open mind is the empty mind. ~ Rose Macaulay

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? ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

This is the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he is profoundly ignorant. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

Words, those precious gems of queer shape and gay colours, sharp angles and soft contours, shades of meaning laid one over the other down history, so that for those far back one must delve among the lost and lovely litter that strews the centuries. They arrange themselves in the most elegant odd patterns; the sound the strangest sweet euphonious notes; they flute and sing and taber, and disappear, like apparitions, with a curious perfume and a most melodious twang. ~ Rose Macaulay

The business of everybody is the business of nobody. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. ~ George Macaulay Trevelyan

[I can] scarcely write upon mathematics or mathematicians. Oh for words to express my abomination of the science. ~ 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. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

How far does one combine resistance to over-control with social justice, i.e. tolerable living for people in general? We are too selfish to be trusted, if left free, to give away enough to make people comfortable enough to give them a chance. Yet if all this is ordered for us, as to some extent it has to be, it so soon leads to tyranny. It is a very difficult problem. If only human beings had more pity, unselfishness, and justice and didn't need coercion to treat each other decently. ~ Rose Macaulay