Walter Bagehot
Author
1826-02-03
Quotes by Walter Bagehot
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We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.
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The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
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Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
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We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.
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Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
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The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
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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.
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An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.
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The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.
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A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
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It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.
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A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
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The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
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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.
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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.
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So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.
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Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
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Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
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The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
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The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does more good or harm.
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