Quotes from bagehot walter vii

War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valour, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.

"Maternity," it has been said, "is a matter of fact, paternity is a matter of opinion."

The mistake of military ethics is, to exaggerate the conceptions of discipline, and so to present the moral force of the will in a barer form than it ever ought to take: military morals can direct the axe to cut down the trees, but it knows nothing of the quiet force by which the forest grows.

The breed of ancient times was impaired for war by trade and luxury, but the modern breed is not so impaired.

What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed law; not of cementing ... a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something better.

The work of nature in making generations is a patchwork—part resemblance, part contrast.

No nation admits of an abstract definition; all nations are beings of many qualities and many sides; no historical event exactly illustrates any one principle; every cause is intertwined and surrounded with a hundred others.

Many a battered Minister may be seen to think much more of the vicissitudes which make him and unmake him, than of any office matter.

In an ordinary despotism, the powers of a despot are limited by his bodily capacity, and by the calls of pleasure; he is but one man; there are but twelve hours in his day, and he is not disposed to employ more than a small part in dull business; he keeps the rest for the court, or the harem, or for society.

Most political crises—the decisive votes, which determine the fate of Government—are generally either on questions of foreign policy or of new laws; and the questions of foreign policy come out generally in this way, that the Government has already done something, and that it is for the one part of the legislature alone—for the House of Commons, and not for the House of Lords—to say whether they have or have not forfeited their place by the treaty they have made.

The evils of a bad tax are quite sure to be pressed upon the ears of Parliament in season and out of season; the few persons who have to pay it are thoroughly certain to make themselves heard.

The use of the Queen, in a dignified capacity, is incalculable. Without her in England, the present English Government would fail and pass away. Most people when they read that the Queen walked on the slopes at Windsor—that the Prince of Wales went to the Derby—have imagined that too much thought and prominence were given to little things. But they have been in error; and it is nice to trace how the actions of a retired widow and an unemployed youth become of such importance.

In reverencing wealth we reverence not a man, but an appendix to a man.