Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

There is no sinner like a young saint.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, - though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, - the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

I'm always suspicious of people who repent of other people's sins.

The virtue of some people consists wholly in condemning the vices in others.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism.

Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion.

That Newt Gingrich or any mainstream Republican has the nerve to look down from what they perceive as their moral mountaintop at anyone is laughable.

The thing I hate the most in any kind of writing is self-righteousness. Where you pretend you don't have the same kinds of flaws your subject has.

At times, it appears easy to sermonise on morality and ethics. But morality and ethics appear good only when applied to others, never on oneself.

Pharisaism is not a degeneration in a good man: a large portion of it is rather the condition of all being-good.

The more immoral we become in big ways, the more puritanical we become in little ways.

A sense of righteousness is even more dangerous than a violent temper.

These are the meats to abstain from- others' wealth, others' wives, slander, envy, covetousness and pride.

Men condemne the same things in others, which they approve in themselves; on the other side, they publickly commend what they privately condemne;

We are living in a sanctimonious age.

It is impossible to deny that dishonest men often grow rich and famous, becoming powerful in their parish or in parliament. Their portraits grace shop windows; and they live and die respected. This success is theirs; yet it is not the success which a noble soul will envy.

… the public has come to accept torture as a legitimate instrument of government, something that the Founding Fathers would have been aghast at.

Many people will automatically develop a sort of selective morality. They will have one set of ethics—the one they were taught as children and been used to all their lives—for judging their selves and their friends. They will have another, and a much lower one, for the President of the United States.

The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

The people of this country are remarkable for their hospitable reception of foreigners, and for their forgetfulness of past animosities. Napoleon Bonaparte, the greatest enemy that England ever had, was treated while at Plymouth with respect, and with commiseration while at St Helena. Marshal Soult, who had fought in many battles against the English, was received with generous acclamation when he came here as Special Ambassador. The King of the French, Mons. Guizot, and Prince Metternich, though all of them great antagonists of English policy and English interests, were treated in this country with courtesy and kindness. But General Haynau was looked upon as a great moral criminal; …. But Viscount Palmerston can assure your Majesty that those feelings of just and honorable indignation have not been confined to England, for he had good reason to know that General Haynau's ferocious and unmanly treatment of the unfortunate inhabitants of Brescia and of other towns and places in Italy, his savage proclamations to the people of Pesth, and his barbarous acts in Hungary excited almost as much disgust in Austria as in England, and that the nickname of "General Hyæna" was given to him at Vienna long before it was applied to him in London.

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach.

I am sorry to say I do doubt the honesty of many men that are called good at home, that have given themselves up to serve a party.

One of the most disconcerting phenomena of these times is the disparity between the enormous amount of idealist propaganda that goes on from pulpit, platform and press, and the inconsiderable effect that it seems to produce in the actual conduct of men and of nations.