Top 120 Quotes & Sayings by Walter Bagehot

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.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

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.

The real essence of work is concentrated energy.

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

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.

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.

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

An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.

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

We must not let daylight in upon the magic.

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.

Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.

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

Woman absent is woman dead.

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

The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.

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.

What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.

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

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.

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.

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

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

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.

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

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.

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

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.

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.

Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.

Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.

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

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

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

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

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.

Life is a school of probability.

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

The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.

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.

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

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.

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.

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

The real essence of work is concentrated energy - people who really have that in a superior degree by nature are independent of the forms and habits and artifices by which less able and less active people are kept up to their labors.

Go ahead and do the impossible. It's worth the look on the faces of those who said you couldn't.

If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone.

Adventure is the life of commerce, but caution is the life of banking.

The cardinal maxim is, that any aid to a present bad Bank is the surest mode of preventing the establishment of a future good Bank.

Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, 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 the understanding.

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

In my youth I hoped to do great things; now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.

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

All people are most credulous when they are most happy.

A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.

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. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others.

In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.

The characteristic danger of great nations, like the Romans or the English which have a long history of continuous creation, is that they may at last fail from not comprehending the great institutions which they have created