Quotes from bagehot walter xv

The wind bloweth where it listeth; but it is scarcely more partial, more quick, more unaccountable, than the glow of an emotion excited by a supernatural and unseen object.

And so the permanent public servant will be teased by the wits, oppressed by the bores, and massacred by the innovators of Parliament.

Sound men are sound from the first.

The debates in the American Congress have little teaching efficacy; it is the characteristic vice of Presidential government to deprive them of that efficacy; in that government a debate in the legislature has little effect, for it cannot turn out the executive, and the executive can veto all it decides.

It is a grave objection to our existing Parliamentary constitution that it gives much power to regions of past greatness, and refuses equal power to regions of present greatness.

Society is too correct and dull to be an occupation.

Grave and careful men may have domestic virtues on a constitutional throne, but even these fail sometimes, and to imagine that men of more eager temperaments will commonly produce them, is to expect grapes from thorns and figs from thistles.

A nation of unimpressible philosophers would not care at all how the externals of life were managed. Who is the showman is not material unless you care about the show.

The nation, even if it chose for itself, would, in some degree, be an unskilled body; but when it does not choose for itself, but only as latent agitators wish, it is like a large, lazy man, with a small vicious mind.

At any rate, the pre-historic times were spent in making men capable of writing a history, and having something to put in it when it is written, and we can see how it was done.

The deep sea of mysticism lies opposed to some natures; in some moods it is a sublime wonder; in others an "impious ocean,"—they will never put forth on it at any time.

The soul "itself by itself," could tell all it wanted if it would be true to its sublimer isolation.

We are not now concerned with perfection or excellence; we seek only for simple fitness and bare competency.