"We have classical associations and great names of our own which we can confidently oppose to the most splendid of ancient times. Senate has not to our ears a sound so venerable as Parliament. We respect the Great Charter more than the laws of Solon. The Capitol and the Forum impress us with less awe than our own Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey...The list of warriors and statesmen by whom our constitution was founded or preserved, from De Montfort down to Fox, may well stand a comparison with the Fasti of Rome. The dying thanksgiving of Sydney is as noble as the libation which Thrasea poured to Liberating Jove: and we think with far less pleasure of Cato tearing out his entrails than of Russell saying, as he turned away from his wife, that the bitterness of death was past."
React to this quote
More by Thomas Babington Macaulay
See allResonant Thoughts
"Old age and death are possible in and with a psychophysical organism. Such an organism must be born; therefore it pre-supposes birth. But birth is the inevitable result of past deeds or Kamma. Kamma i…"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"The manufacture of foreign crisis and war hysteria has been used since the beginning of history to suppress…"
— Kevin Carson"There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left mean…"
— Gore Vidal"Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they …"
— Fernand Braudel"In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action."
— Dag Hammarskjöld"Archive of Wells's BBC broadcasts"
— H. G. Wells"Economic growth in Australia did not require the incorporation of a backward, unproductive rural sector. Wh…"
— John Hirst
