Walter Bagehot Quotes
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A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
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The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
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The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
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No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
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The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.
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One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
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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.
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Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.
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Credit means that a certain confidence is given, and a certain trust reposed. Is that trust justified? and is that confidence wise? These are the cardinal questions. To put it more simply credit is a set of promises to pay; will those promises be kept?
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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.
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A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.
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A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
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It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
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The caucus is a sort of representative meeting which sits voting and voting till they have cut out all the known men against whom much is to be said, and agreed on some unknown man against whom there is nothing known, and therefore nothing to be alleged.
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Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
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The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
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A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
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Most men of business think 'Anyhow this system will probably last my time. It has gone on a long time, and is likely to go on still.'
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No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
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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.
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Of Guizot A Puritan born in France by mistake.
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Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
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The purse strings tie us to our kind.
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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.