Quotes from Walter Bagehot

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.

Life is a school of probability. In the writings of every man of patient practicality, in the midst of whatever other defects, you will find a careful appreciation of the degrees of likelihood; a steady balancing of them one against another; a disinclination to make things too clear, to overlook the debit side of the account in mere contemplation of the enormousness of the credit.

In truth, 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 British monarchy:] Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic. We must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all combatants.

So long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to understanding.

The sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn.

Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of its excellence, an indication of its success.

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.

A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and molars. Sydney Smith was a "molar."

A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.

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.

Public opinion... requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.

A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.

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.

Nothing is more unpleasant that a virtuous person with a mean mind.

The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economized by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.

The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.

War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valor, 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.

Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.