Quotes By Walter Bagehot

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.

An influential member of parliament has not only to pay much money to become such, and to give time and labour, he has also to sacrifice his mind too - at least all the characteristics part of it that which is original and most his own.

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.

An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.

The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.

The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.

Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

We must not let daylight in upon the magic.

The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.

The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.

A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.

The real essence of work is concentrated energy.

So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.

The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.