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An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.

Walter Bagehot

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Walter Bagehot
Age: 51 †
Born: 1826
Born: February 3
Died: 1877
Died: March 24
Businessperson
Economist
Engineer
Journalist
Political Scientist
Politician
Sociologist
Langport
Somerset
Quiet
Mankind
Conspicuous
Stay
Failings
Silence
Quietness
Language
Introvert
Music
Inability
Communication
Failing

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The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips, Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair The Grecian gods are like the Greeks, As keen-eyed, cold and fair.
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The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on a large scale, is much stupidity.
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We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.
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So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
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Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
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One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. It...makes you think that after all, your favorite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill-founded....Naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who brings it.
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We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
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The best security for people's doing their duty is that they should not know anything else to do.
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An ambassador is not simply an agent he is also a spectacle.
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Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone: but what we have requires no proof.
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Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
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We think of Euclid as of fine ice we admire Newton as we admire the peak of Teneriffe. Even the intensest labors, the most remote triumphs of the abstract intellect, seem to carry us into a region different from our own-to be in a terra incognita of pure reasoning, to cast a chill on human glory.
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I'm not the kind of writer who's able to block out the world around me. I'm mindful of our own haves and have-nots, how our culture often blames and punishes the have-nots. I worry about our precarious economic and political climate.
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The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
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In my youth I hoped to do great things now I shall be satisfied to get through without scandal.
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Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
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A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
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One cannot make men good by Act of Parliament.
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Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
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Stupidity is nature's favorite resource for preserving consistency of opinion.
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