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Walter Bagehot [1826-1877] English
Rank: 101
Author, Journalist


Walter Bagehot was a British journalist, businessman, and essayist, who wrote extensively about government, economics, and literature.

Great, Best, Death, Family, Government, Men, Work



QuoteTagsRank
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. Best, Government
101
An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.
102
A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. Great
103
No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation. Great, Work
104
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. Men
105
A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
106
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
107
Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
108
A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life. Family
109
No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist. Death
110
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.
111
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.
112
Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
113
The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
114
It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
115
An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.
116
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.
117
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.
118
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.
119
All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.
120
Life is a school of probability.
121
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.
122
The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
123
The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.
124
The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
125
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
126
Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
201
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.
202
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
203
A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
204
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.
205
A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
206
A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.
207
Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
208
Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
209
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
210
You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.
211
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.
212
Woman absent is woman dead.
213
Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.
214
We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
215
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.
216
Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
217
The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.
218
So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
219
What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.
220

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