161 Quotes by Walter Bagehot

The soldier—that is, the great soldier—of to-day is not a romantic animal, dashing at forlorn hopes, animated by frantic sentiment, full of fancies as to a love-lady or a sovereign; but a quiet, grave man, busied in charts, exact in sums, master of the art of tactics, occupied in trivial detail; thinking, as the Duke of Wellington was said to do, most of the shoes of his soldiers; despising all manner of èclat and eloquence; perhaps, like Count Moltke, ‘silent in seven languages’.

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm.

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.

A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.

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

Not only does a bureaucracy tend to under-government in point of quality; it tends to over-government in point of quantity.

The great pleasure of life is doing for pleasure things I do not like to do.

A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.