Quotes By Walter Bagehot
I started out by believing God for a newer car than the one I was driving. I started out believing God for a nicer apartment than I had. Then I moved up.
Walter Bagehot
A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.
Walter Bagehot
A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.
Walter Bagehot
Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of its excellence, an indication of its success.
Walter Bagehot
The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.
Walter Bagehot
No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
Walter Bagehot
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
Walter Bagehot
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.
Walter Bagehot
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.
Walter Bagehot
No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
Walter Bagehot
Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
Walter Bagehot
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.
Walter Bagehot
So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
Walter Bagehot
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.
Walter Bagehot
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.
Walter Bagehot
The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.
Walter Bagehot
You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.
Walter Bagehot
The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
Walter Bagehot
A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
Walter Bagehot