161 Quotes by Walter Bagehot

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.

Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.

Woman absent is woman dead.

The crown is, according to the saying, the 'fountain of honour'; but the treasury is the spring of business.

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the

The worst families are those in which the members never really speak their minds to one another; they maintain an atmosphere of unreality, and every one always lives in an atmosphere of suppressed ill-feeling. It is the same with nations.

A perfectly poetic appreciation of nature contains two elements, a knowledge of facts, and a sensibility to charms. Everybody who may have to speak to some naturalists will be well aware how widely the two may be separated. He will have seen that a man may study butterflies and forget that they are beautiful, or be perfect in the "Lunar theory" without knowing what most people mean by the moon.

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.