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.
Walter Bagehot
- More quotations by Author
Walter Bagehot quotes
A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.
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.
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.
All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.
An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.
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.
An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.
An influential member of parliament has not only to pay much money to become such, and to give time and labour, he has also to sacrifice his mind too - at least all the characteristics part of it that which is original and most his own.
Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
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.
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.
Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.
I started out by believing God for a newer car than the one I was driving. I started out believing God for a nicer apartment than I had. Then I moved up.
In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best.
It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
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.
Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea
Open-mindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake.
Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
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.
The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
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.
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.
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.
Woman absent is woman dead.
Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
Similiar authors
Barbara Pym
Aesop
Orson Scott Card
John Galsworthy
John Gross
Josiah Gilbert Holland
Galway Kinnell
William McFee
Irving Wallace
Lenora Mattingly Weber