Walter Bagehot

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Life is a school of probability.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“Woman absent is woman dead.”

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

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

“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.”