Words matter. These are the best Walter Bagehot Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
A man’s mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.
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.
Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
Woman absent is woman dead.
A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.
So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism – despotism during the campaign – is indispensable.
A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.
We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
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.
Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.
No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
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.
Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.
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.
The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.
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.
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 whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
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.
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.
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.
The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
