English economist and political analyst (1826-1877)
A settled and practical people are distinctly in favor of heavy relaxations, placid prolixities, slow comforts.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
It is an inevitable defect, that bureaucrats will care more for routine than for results.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
If anybody could have any doubt about the liveliness of Shakespeare, let them consider the character of Falstaff. When a man has created that without a capacity for laughter, then a blind man may succeed in describing colors. Intense animal spirits are the single sentiment (if they be a sentiment) of the entire character. If most men were to save up all the gaiety of their whole lives, it would come about to the gaiety of one speech in Falstaff.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
The defect of this religion is, that it is too abstract for the practical, and too bare for the musing.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
It should be observed, too, in fairness to the unroyal species of Cabinet government, that it is exempt from one of the greatest and most characteristic defects of the royal species. Where there is no Court there can be no evil influence from a Court.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
A modern savage is anything but the simple being which philosophers of the eighteenth century imagined him to be; on the contrary, his life is twisted into a thousand curious habits; his reason is darkened by a thousand strange prejudices; his feelings are frightened by a thousand cruel superstitions. The whole mind of a modern savage is, so to say, tattooed over with monstrous images; there is not a smooth place anywhere about it. But there is no reason to suppose the minds of pre-historic men to be so cut and marked; on the contrary, the creation of these habits, these superstitions, these prejudices, must have taken ages.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Theodora never married. Love did not, however, kill her—at least, if it did, it was a long time at the task, as she survived these events more than sixty years. She never, seemingly, forgot the past.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Probably we pursue an insoluble problem in seeking a suitable education for a morbidly melancholy mind.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
In spiritedness, the style of Shakespeare is very like to that of Scott. The description of a charge of cavalry in Scott reads, as was said before, as if it was written on horseback. A play by Shakespeare reads as if it were written in a playhouse. The great critics assure you that a theatrical audience must be kept awake, but Shakespeare knew this of his own knowledge. When you read him, you feel a sensation of motion, a conviction that there is something "up," a notion that not only is something being talked about, but also that something is being done.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
But, explicable or inexplicable—to be wondered at or not wondered at—the fact is clear; tendencies and temptations are transmitted even to the fourth generation both for good and for evil, both in those who serve God and in those who serve Him not.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
The debates in the American Congress have little teaching efficacy; it is the characteristic vice of Presidential government to deprive them of that efficacy; in that government a debate in the legislature has little effect, for it cannot turn out the executive, and the executive can veto all it decides.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
I have endeavoured to explain how difficult it is for inexperienced mankind to take to such a government; how much more natural, that is, how much more easy to uneducated men is loyalty to a monarch.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The mode of governing the country, according to the existing laws, is mostly worn into a rut, and most administrations move in it because it is easier to move there than anywhere else.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
If A kills B before B kills A, then A survives, and the human race is a race of A's.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
In general, too, the conquerors would be better than the conquered (most merits in early society are more or less military merits), but they would not be very much better, for the lowest steps in the ladder of civilization are very steep, and the effort to mount them is slow and tedious.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The thirst of the soul was to be satisfied, the deep torture of the spirit to have rest.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
We have voluntary show enough already in London; we do not wish to have it encouraged and intensified, but quieted and mitigated.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
A great deal of the reticence of diplomacy had, I think history shows, much better be spoken out.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The leading statesmen in a free country have great momentary power. They settle the conversation of mankind. It is they who, by a great speech or two, determine what shall be said and what shall be written for long after.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
This is no new description of human nature. For eighteen hundred years Christendom has been amazed at the description in St. Paul of the law of his members warring against the law of his mind. Expressions most unlike in language, but not dissimilar in meaning, are to be found in some of the most familiar passages of Aristotle.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies