Thomas Babington Macaulay
The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.
That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.
Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods?
Was none who would be foremost
To lead such dire attack;
But those behind cried, "Forward!"
And those before cried, "Back!"
The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.
It is odd that the last twenty-five years which have witnessed the greatest progress ever made in physical science — the greatest victories ever achieved by mind over matter — should have produced hardly a volume that will be remembered in 1900.