Walter Bagehot Quotes

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

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

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

“Life is a school of probability.”

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

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

“The abstract thinking of the world is never to be expected of persons in high places.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.”

“You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor... Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.”

“It is the continual effort of the beginning that creates the hoarded energy of the end.”

“An ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered.”