Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

What were once vices are the fashion of the day.

All things can corrupt when minds are prone to evil.

Fashions in sin change.

Times change. The vices of your age are stylish today.

What once were vices are manners now.

But when these [the previous generations] had departed out of this world, and a new generation succeeded, who were ignorant of this troublesome time, and had only experience of the present prosperity, all the laws of truth and justice were so shaken and subverted, that not so much as a vestige or remembrance of these virtues remained among the above-named orders of men, except among a very few

What is seen being done by the many soon obtains the force of custom; while the affairs of men have scarcely ever been so well regulated that the better things pleased the majority. Therefore, the private vices of the many have often caused public error, or rather a general agreement on vices, which these good men now want to make law…

… the most depraved wretches on earth.

Sin in a wicked man is like poison in a serpent; it is in its natural place.

A new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken...

No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted.

Life was certainly more entertaining when people were indulging their vices as opposed to going to meetings to indulge in a new vice: discussing their innermost thoughts in public.

The vices of youth now exceed my powers, but not my fancy.

For that which all men then did virtue call, Is now called vice; and that which vice was hight, Is now hight virtue, and so used of all: Right now is wrong, and wrong that was is right

I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.

You went to Woodstock and all that trash, your generation is fading fast.

Cato requested old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old age, which was accompanied with many other evils.

Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but pass?. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.

Women with women, men with men, they committed indecent acts with one another, and they received in themselves the due penalty for their perversions. They’re full of murder, envy, strife, hatred. They are insolent, arrogant, God-haters. They are heartless, they are faithless, they are senseless, they are ruthless. They invent ways of doing evil.

About the time we get old enough to be as wicked as we want to be, we don't want to be so very wicked after all.

Flattery was formerly a vice; it has now become the fashion.

The so-called new morality is too often the old immorality condoned.

The heterodoxy of one generation is the orthodoxy of the next.

Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. Now, Heaven knows, anything goes. The world has gone mad today, and good's bad today, and black's white today, and day's night today.