Quotes from Walter Bagehot

A people never hears censure of itself.

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.

Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous with a mean mind.

A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.

Money is economic power.

The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.

A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.

Business is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously, and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.

Stupidity is nature's favorite resource for preserving consistency of opinion.

What we opprobriously call stupidity, though not an enlivening quality in common society, is nature's favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Life is a school of probability.

A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.

The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.

Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.

To a great experience one thing is essential, an experiencing nature.

The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.

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

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

Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.

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