No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Meditation, Work
Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
—Walter Bagehot
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.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Government
Business is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously, and more deeply. But it does not look as if it did.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Business
There seems to be an unalterable contradiction between the human mind and its employments. How can a soul be a merchant? What relation to an immortal being have the price of linseed, the brokerage on hemp? Can an undying creature debit petty expenses and charge for carriage paid? The soul ties its shoes; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Soul
Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Men & Women, Women, Men and Women, Men
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
Topics: Poverty, Wealth, The Poor
The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendor of those who eclipsed and preceded them.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Politics
When great questions end, little parties begin.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Politics
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
—Walter Bagehot
A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Weddings, Marriage
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Society
The best security for people’s doing their duty is that they should not know anything else to do.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Duty
A man’s mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Wife
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.
—Walter Bagehot
A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Bureaucracy
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.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Nationality, Nation, Nationalism, Nations
An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Diplomacy
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.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Public opinion, Opinion
So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism—despotism during the campaign—is indispensable.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Tyranny
An inability to stay quiet is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Silence
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.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Freedom
Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Progress
A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Teachers, Teaching, Education
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.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Conversation
We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Magic
Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: War
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.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Exaggeration
The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Focus, Concentration
Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger.
—Walter Bagehot
Topics: Belief
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- G. K. Chesterton English Journalist
- Chester Barnard American Businessperson
- Colleen Barrett American Businessperson
- Dhirubhai Ambani Indian Businessperson
- Anil Ambani Indian Businessperson
- Mukesh Ambani Indian Businessperson
- P. T. Barnum American Businessperson
- Robert Kiyosaki American Businessperson
- Jack Welch American Businessperson
- Jeffrey Immelt American Businessperson
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