Quotes from bagehot walter xii

A single run of luck has made the fortune of many a charm and many idols.

The Americans will probably to some extent modify their past system of total administrative cataclysms, but their very existence in the only competing form of free government should prepare us for and make us patient with the mild transitions of Parliamentary government.

Free government is self-government. A government of the people by the people. The best government of this sort is that which the people think best.

The more we study the nature of Cabinet government, the more we shall shrink from exposing at a vital instant its delicate machinery to a blow from a casual, incompetent, and perhaps semi-insane outsider.

The old excitement of thought has half died out, or rather it is diffused in quiet pleasure over a life instead of being concentrated in intense and eager spasms.

The great bulk of treaties could wait a little without harm, and in the very few cases when urgent haste is necessary, an autumn session of Parliament could well be justified, for the occasion must be of grave and critical importance.

The essence of a civilised age is, that administration requires the continued aid of legislation.

The idea that the head of the Government is the head of society is so fixed in the ideas of mankind that only a few philosophers regard it as historical and accidental, though when the matter is examined, that conclusion is certain and even obvious.

But a good Government is well worth a great deal of social dullness. The dignified torpor of English society is inevitable if we give precedence, not to the cleverest classes, but to the oldest classes, and we have seen how useful that is.

The least veracious man will tell truly the color of his coat, the hour of his dinner, the materials of his shoes.

This is the age of dramatic art, when men wonder at the big characters of old, as schoolboys at the words of Aeschylus, and try to find in their own breasts the roots of those monstrous, but artistically developed impersonations.

The dignified parts of Government are those which bring it force—which attract its motive power. The efficient parts only employ that power. The comely parts of a Government HAVE need, for they are those upon which its vital strength depends. They may not do anything definite that a simpler polity would not do better; but they are the preliminaries, the needful prerequisites of ALL work. They raise the army, though they do not win the battle.

To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature. It is not enough to have opportunity, it is essential to feel it. Some occasions come to all men; but to many they are of little use, and to some they are none.