Quote #39

Wherever literature consoles sorrow or assuages pain; wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,-there is exhibited in its noblest form the immortal influence of Athens.

More from Thomas Babington Macaulay

  1. Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.
  2. We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.
  3. That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.
  4. Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.
  5. Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
  6. The dust and silence of the upper shelf.
  7. It is odd that the last twenty-five years which have witnessed the greatest progress ever made in physical science - the greatest victories…
  8. As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

All Thomas Babington Macaulay quotes