"Lord Macaulay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... changes, that we very often forget such a change as the establishment of Universities. And if any of you are inclined to prophesy, I should like to read to you something that was written by that great and famous man, Lord Macaulay, in the year 1836, long before the Universities were thought of. What did he say? What a warning it is, gentlemen. He wrote, in the year 1836:—"At the single town of Hooghly 1,400 boys are learning English. The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious.... ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... reference to himself when ascribing words to persons, any more than he could have failed to vary the grammar to the accusative and infinitive. This elementary principle in Latin composition is known, (as Lord Macaulay would have said,) "to every schoolboy." It was, certainly, well known to such an accomplished "grammaticus" as Bracciolini; and for the very simple reason that he adheres to it on all other occasions. His neglect of it in this instance is as strong a proof as any that can be advanced, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... Lord Macaulay died too soon. We never felt this so deeply as when we finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work. Macaulay died too soon—for none but he could mete out complete and comprehensive justice to the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... experience of the inner working of our Government offices, he speaks on education with an expert's authority. Lord Macaulay, who went to India in 1834 as legal member of Council, was responsible for the introduction of English as the vehicle of instruction. He had gained admission to the caste of Whigs, whose battle-cry was "Knowledge for the People," and his brilliant rhetoric overpowered ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... the workmen had gilt the final "y" in Lord Macaulay's name, and the names stretched in unbroken file round the dome of the British Museum. At a considerable depth beneath, many hundreds of the living sat at the spokes of a cart-wheel copying from printed books into manuscript books; now and then rising to ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... class of ship worked by convicts was used by the French down to the middle of the eighteenth century. The men of Teignmouth, who had no wish to be captured and employed as galley slaves, seeing that they were in a hopeless position, retreated inland. Lord Macaulay thus describes the position in ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the belief that in this biography of Boswell will be found something that is new to professed students of the period, and much to the class of general readers that may lead them to reconsider the verdict at which they may have arrived from the brilliant but totally misleading essay by Lord Macaulay. At least, the writer cherishes the hope that it will materially add to the correct understanding and the enjoyment of Boswell's great work, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... to a hot supper. We always think of the actor as on the stage: he always thinks of us as in the boxes. In justice to the poets of the present day, it may be noticed that they have improved on their brethren in Johnson's time, who were, according to Lord Macaulay, hunted by bailiffs and familiar with sponging-houses, and who, when hospitably entertained, were wont to disturb the household of the entertainer by roaring for hot punch at four o'clock in the morning. Since that period the poets have improved in the decencies of life: ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... easy to show where Lord Macaulay could have been greater. His life lies open to us as the ether. We complain because he did not read less and meditate more; we sigh at his lack of religion and mention the fact that he never loved a woman, seemingly waiving tautology and the fact that men who ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... words are unimportant, or lengthy and uninteresting, the Third Person is preferable.* Thus, where Essex is asking Sir Robert Cecil that Francis Bacon may be appointed Attorney-General, the dialogue is (as it almost always is in Lord Macaulay's writings) in the First Person, except where it becomes tedious and uninteresting so as to require condensation, and then it drops into the ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... from the country for shelter there; but the Tiber was the best defense, and it was only crossed by one wooden bridge, and the farther side of that was guarded by a fort, called the Janiculum. But the vanguards of the overwhelming Etruscan army soon took the fort, and then, in the gallant words of Lord Macaulay's ballad,— ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Samuel Adams, in Boston, were startling the crown officials with the same accents of liberty, and why the Mecklenburg Resolutions had the very ring of the Protest of the Province of Massachusetts. This law of simultaneous intellectual movement, recognized by all thinkers, expatiated upon by Lord Macaulay and by Mr. Herbert Spencer among recent writers, is eminently applicable to that change of thought and feeling which necessarily ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of monarchy, expressed in the words "von Gottes Gnaden" ("By the Grace of God"), is a political conception, which, under its customary English translation, "by Divine Right," has often been ridiculed by English writers. Lord Macaulay, it will be remembered, in his "History of England," asserts that the doctrine first emerged into notice when James the Sixth of Scotland ascended the English throne. "It was gravely ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... Royal Society, that the French King was willing to allow pensions to one or two learned Englishmen, but they never made any answer {310} to such a proposal." This was written in 1671, and the thing probably happened several years before. Mr. De Morgan communicated the account of the proposal to Lord Macaulay, who replied that he did not think that any Englishman received a literary pension from Louis; but that there is a curious letter, about 1664, from the French Ambassador, in which he says that he has, by his master's orders, been making inquiries as to the state of learning ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... the effect produced on the audience of students, of which I was then one, when Lord Macaulay delivered his Rectorial address in the University of Glasgow, and when, after giving such pictures as he alone could paint, of the character of the four centuries that had closed since the university ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... Walter nor Miss Edgeworth were ever annoyed with the little discomforts of travel, and they found amusement in everything, shaming all with whom they came in contact. Their boatman on the lake of Killarney told Lord Macaulay twenty years afterwards that the pleasure of rowing them had made him amends for missing a ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Methodist preacher, was an earnest supporter of slavery. When the importation of slaves finally ceased the states began the new industry of breeding slaves; the leading state for this breeding, and the one which contained the largest number of stud farms, was Virginia. Lord Macaulay, in a speech delivered before the House of Commons on February 26, 1845, said: "The slave states of the Union are of two classes, the breeding states, where the human beast of burden increases, and multiplies, and becomes strong for labor; and the sugar and cotton states to which these beasts ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... been of such slow growth as that of Jane Austen. Readers of the present day know the rank that is generally assigned to her. They have been told by Archbishop Whately, in his review of her works, and by Lord Macaulay, in his review of Madame D'Arblay's, the reason why the highest place is to be awarded to Jane Austen, as a truthful drawer of character, and why she is to be classed with those who have approached nearest, in that respect, to the great master Shakspeare. They see her safely placed, ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... forty years and was only sundered by death. Cecil was afterwards made Lord Burghley, and the confidence thus first reposed in him within the hall that was afterwards to become the home of his descendants was most remarkable. "No arts," writes Lord Macaulay, "could shake the confidence which she reposed in her old and trusty servant. The courtly graces of Leicester, the brilliant talents and accomplishments of Essex, touched the fancy, perhaps the heart, of the woman, but no rival could deprive the treasurer ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... hard hand released, stared at it a moment perplexed. "That ain't the method, sir; not at our school. But I'm gettin' along, and the book is called Lord Macaulay." ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... between a battle-scene of a mediaeval Spanish poet and the culminating incidents of Lord Macaulay's Battle of the Lake Regillus, as to justify somewhat extended citations. Of the Spanish writer, Professor Longfellow says, in his note upon the extract from the Vida de San Millan given in the Poets and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... political and social world, while Lansdowne House, Holland House, and others were open to the 'sommites' in all branches of literature, science, rank, and politics. . . . It was the last year of Lord Macaulay's life, and as a few out of many names which I recall come Dean Milman, Mr. Froude (whose review of the 'Dutch Republic' in the 'Westminster' was one of the first warm recognitions it ever received), the Duke and Duchess of Argyll, Sir William Stirling Maxwell, then Mr. Stirling ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Macaulay, father of Lord Macaulay, became Governor for the first time. The Company also made its earliest effort to open up trade with the interior by a mission, and two of their servants penetrated 300 miles inland to Timbo, capital of that part of Pulo-land. A deputation ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... series opens well with Mr. Leslie Stephen's sketch of Dr. Johnson. It could hardly have been done better; and it will convey to the readers for whom it is intended a juster estimate of Johnson than either of the two essays of Lord Macaulay."—Pall Mall Gazette. ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... heroism the Romans set up a statue to Horatius in the comitium, and gave him in reward as much land as he could drive his plough round in the space of a whole day. Such deeds cannot be fitly told in halting prose, and Lord Macaulay, in his "Lays of Ancient Rome," has ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Scott in Waverley and The Fair Maid of Perth, but also from the "cattle-drives" which have been resorted to in our own day in Ireland, though these latter had a different motive than plunder. As has been observed by Sir Henry Sumner Maine, Lord Macaulay was mistaken in ascribing this custom to "some native vice of Irish character," for, as every student of ancient Ireland may perceive, it is rather to be regarded as "a survival, an ancient and ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... artifice, so often patronised by Lord Macaulay of describing a character by a series of paradoxes, is of course, in one sense, a mere artifice. It is easy enough to make a dark grey black and a light grey white, and to bring the two into unnatural proximity. But it rests also upon the principle which is more of a platitude than ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... doubt that people should be a good deal idle in youth. For though here and there a Lord Macaulay may escape from school honours with all his wits about him, most boys pay so dear for their medals that they never afterwards have a shot in their locker, and begin the world bankrupt. And the same holds true during all the time a lad is educating himself, or suffering ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mistress of every string of the minstrel's lyre, save that which sounds of broil and bloodshed. There is more of the old ballad simplicity in her composition than can be found in the strains of any living poet besides.' Another critic compared Mrs. Hewitt's ballads to those of Lord Macaulay, while Mrs. Alaric Watts, in her capacity of Annual editor, wrote to assure her old friend and contributor that, 'In thy simplest poetry there are sometimes turns so exquisite as to bring the tears to my eyes. Thou hast as much poetry ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... one of the famous legends of Roman history, and it loses nothing in Macaulay's brilliant telling. Lord Macaulay (1800-1859) was an English statesman, essayist, historian, and poet. He reveled in the romance of history. Read and ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... Lord Macaulay says of the collations with which the sugar-refiners of Bristol regaled their visitors: "The repast was dressed in the furnace, And was accompanied by a rich brewage made of the best Spanish wine, and celebrated over ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... they hold between the upper and nether millstone of landlord and tenant. Perhaps they have made a good thing of it, but if so they have earned it, for their position always reminds one of that assigned by Lord Macaulay to the officers of the East India Company, such as Olive and Warren Hastings. To these founders of our Eastern Empire "John Company" said, "Respect treaties; keep faith with native rulers; do not oppress the ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... example of a peculiar class of Poetry;—that written by thoughtful men who practised this Art but little. Wotton's, 72, is another. Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Berkeley, Dr. Johnson, Lord Macaulay, have left similar specimens. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... difficulty in finding actors for so many Irish characters.' The little drama was then turned into a story, by Mr. Edgeworth's advice. Patronage was laid aside for the moment, and THE ABSENTEE appeared in its place in the second part of TALES OF FASHIONABLE LIFE. We all know Lord Macaulay's verdict upon this favourite story of his, the last scene of which he specially admired and compared to the ODYSSEY. [Lord Macaulay was not the only notable admirer of THE ABSENTEE. The present writer ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... Lord Macaulay says: "We doubt whether any modern poet has possessed in an equal degree some of the highest qualities of the great ancient masters. The words bard and inspiration, which seem so cold and affected when applied to other modern ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... rural regions. Why certain good people should object to the dance, innocent, joyous and beneficial as it is in practically all its manifestations and associations, can only be explained on the grounds given by Lord Macaulay from the British Puritan's objection to the sport of bear-baiting. "The Puritan condemned bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators." There was ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... nineteenth-century song will commemorate, besides Byron, those agreeable versifiers—Lord Holland, Lord Melbourne, and Lord Winchilsea, and those cultured translators—Lord Strangford, Lord Ellesmere, and Lord Derby. It would scarcely be fair to include among noble poets Lord Macaulay, Lord Houghton, or the first Lord Lytton, for they, like Lord Tennyson, were created peers, and won their laurel-wreaths in the character of commoners. In the same way, I have taken no account of the poetical ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... better legislation for them. He worked and contributed for the ragged schools of England, by which over 200,000 poor children of London were redeemed. He was President of Bible and Missionary Societies, and was for thirty years President of the Young Men's Christian Association. I never forgave Lord Macaulay for saying he hoped that the "praying of Exeter Hall would soon come to an end." On his 80th birthday, a holiday was declared in honour of Lord Shaftesbury, and vast multitudes kept it. From the Lord Mayor himself ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... which however, though respectful in tone,—patronizing rather than eulogistic,—he showed but little sympathy with the author. He pointed out many defects which the critical and religious world has sustained. In the admirable article which Mr. Gladstone wrote on Lord Macaulay himself for one of the principal Reviews not many years ago, he paid back in courteous language, and even under the conventional form of panegyric, in which one great man naturally speaks of another, a still more searching and trenchant criticism on the writings ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... Fetter Lane, Dr. Johnson's friend, Levett, the poor apothecary, met a woman of bad character, who duped him into marriage. The whole story, Dr. Johnson used to say, was as marvellous as any page of "The Arabian Nights." Lord Macaulay, in his highly-coloured and somewhat exaggerated way, calls Levett "an old quack doctor, who bled and dosed coal-heavers and hackney-coachmen, and received for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and a little copper." Levett, however, was neither ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... at the same dinner-party there sat a guest who was to mean a good deal more to me personally than Doctor Lushington—young Mr. George Otto Trevelyan, as he then was, Lord Macaulay's nephew, already the brilliant author of A Competition Wallah, Ladies in Parliament, and much else. We little thought, as we talked, that after thirty-five years his son was to marry ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had an extraordinary memory, and a continuous application and perseverance, which enabled him to suck the contents of many volumes, and to bring out the facts in future years during the preparation of his works. His memory seems to have been of the same order as that of Lord Macaulay, who afterwards made use of his works, and complimented his predecessor ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... ascetic nor an anchorite. He worked for only three or four hours each day; and the rest of the time was given up to reading, to visiting, and to the theatre, he being particularly attracted to the latter form of amusement. His reading was as omnivorous as that of Lord Macaulay. Metaphysics, poetry, novels, were all grist for his mill. This general interest saved him from becoming that greatest of all bores, a ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... to the Archbishop of York, but not having the degree required by the rules of the Establishment, he received through his Grace's secretary "the softest refusal imaginable." The Archbishop had not had the advantage of perusing Lord Macaulay's remarks on the difference between the policy of the Church of England and that of the Church of Rome, with regard to the utilization of religious enthusiasts. In the end Newton was ordained by the Bishop of Lincoln, and threw himself with the energy of a newborn ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... of Lord Macaulay's writings and read them constantly, as he found in them most of the qualities which he admired— great descriptive power, political acumen, satire, neatness of phrase, apt comparisons and analogies, and ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... which I have first quoted. There is certainly ground to surmise that Lord Macaulay had in mind what I have called "The Lay of the Leveler" when in 1820 he wrote "A Radical War-song." In support of this opinion, I subjoin, for comparison, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... be displaced from it. He has written our greatest biography. That is all. Theorize about it as much as you like, account for it how you may, the fact remains. 'Alone I did it.' There has been plenty of theorizing. Lord Macaulay took the subject in hand and tossed it up and down for half a dozen pages with a gusto that drove home to many minds the conviction, the strange conviction, that our greatest biography was written by one of the very smallest men that ever lived, 'a man ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell |
