Walter Bagehot Quotes

88 quotes in 1158 categories

• A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
• An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.
• A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
• An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.
• It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
• A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
• Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
• 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…
• Life is a school of probability.
• 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…
• No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
• Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
• A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
• A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
• No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
• Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
• 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…
• Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of…
• Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees The greatest pleasure in life is doing what…
• If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone.

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