"That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it."

Thomas Babington Macaulay Politics See all quotes by Thomas Babington Macaulay →

React to this quote

More by Thomas Babington Macaulay

See all

“Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.”

“The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.”

“Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.”

“The dust and silence of the upper shelf.”

“In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America.”

“I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.”

Resonant Thoughts

"In my youth and comparative inexperience I had always regarded the yearning and pangs of love as the worst torture that could afflict the human heart. At this moment, however, I began to realize that …"

— Stefan Zweig

Literature1881–1942

#love

"Real terror is the most physically debilitating of emotions. It saps the endocrines, dumps muscle-tightening organic drugs into the bloodstream, races the heart, exhausts the mind."

— Stephen King

Literature1986

#love

"Recovering from an ill-starred romance is, after all, to anyone of sufficient will-power and self-respect, purely an attitude of mind."

— Susan Howatch

Literature1940

#love

"The King had every privilege except that of being at ease. Pompadour provided the atmosphere in which that final luxury was possible. She did not do this, as anyone who thinks about the matter for twe…"

— Robertson Davies

Literature1913–1995

#love