WALTER BAGEHOT QUOTES
English economist and political analyst (1826-1877)
Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
A certain nonchalant ease pervades our modern world: we affect an indifference we scarcely feel; our talk is light almost to affectation, our best writing is the same -- we suggest rather than elaborate, hint rather than declaim.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Biographical Studies
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Shakespeare the Man: An Essay
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The great breeding people have gone out and multiplied ; colonies in every clime attest our success; French is the patois of Europe; English is the language of the world.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Action is a business of risk; the real question is the magnitude of that risk.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen
An inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
A great painter of men must (as has been said) have a faculty of conversing, but he must also have a capacity for solitude. There is much of mankind that a man can only learn from himself.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency.
WALTER BAGEHOT
"Hartley Coleridge", The Works and Life of Walter Bagehot
There is one thing which no one will permit to be treated lightly—himself.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
In the last century it would have sounded strange to speak, as I am going to speak, of the military advantage of RELIGION. Such an idea would have been opposed to ruling prejudices, and would hardly have escaped philosophical ridicule. But the notion is but a commonplace in our day, for a man of genius has made it his own. Mr. Carlyle's books are deformed by phrases like 'infinities' and 'verities' and altogether are full of faults, which attract the very young, and deter all that are older. In spite of his great genius, after a long life of writing, it is a question still whether even a single work of his can take a lasting place in high literature. There is a want of sanity in their manner which throws a suspicion on their substance (though it is often profound); and he brandishes one or two fallacies, of which he has himself a high notion, but which plain people will always detect and deride. But whatever may be the fate of his fame, Mr. Carlyle has taught the present generation many lessons, and one of these is that 'God-fearing' armies are the best armies. Before his time people laughed at Cromwell's saying, 'Trust in God, and keep your powder dry.' But we now know that the trust was of as much use as the powder, if not of more. That high concentration of steady feeling makes men dare everything and do anything.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
No one will ever comprehend the arrested civilizations unless he sees the strict dilemma of early society. Either men had no law at all, and lived in confused tribes, hardly hanging together, or they had to obtain a fixed law by processes of incredible difficulty. Those who surmounted that difficulty soon destroyed all those that lay in their way who did not.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.
WALTER BAGEHOT
introduction, The English Constitution
The military habit makes man think far too much of definite action and far too little of brooding meditation: life is not a set campaign but an irregular work, and the main forces in it are not overt resolutions but latent and half-involuntary promptings.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
As soon as discussion begins the savage propensities of men break forth; even in modern communities, where those propensities, too, have been weakened by ages of culture, and repressed by ages of obedience, as soon as a vital topic for discussion is well started the keenest and most violent passions break forth. Easily destroyed as are early free states by forces from without, they are even more liable to destruction by forces from within.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Life is a school of probability. In the writings of every man of patient practicality, in the midst of whatever other defects, you will find a careful appreciation of the degrees of likelihood; a steady balancing of them one against another; a disinclination to make things too clear, to overlook the debit side of the account in mere contemplation of the enormousness of the credit.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen
But in early time, when writing is difficult, reading rare, and representation undiscovered, those who are to be guided by the discussion must hear it with their own ears, must be brought face to face with the orator, and must feel his influence for themselves.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
In truth, poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The Waverley Novels
Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen