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It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

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
Vices
Morality
Religion
Without
Good
Temptations
Temptation

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The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards
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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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The peculiar essence of our banking system is an unprecedented trust between man and man. And when that trust is much weakened by hidden causes, a small accident may greatly hurt it, and a great accident for a moment may almost destroy it.
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Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.
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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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A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.
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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.
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Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.
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Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
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Poverty is an anomaly to rich people it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
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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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No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
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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 have a chance for it.
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The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
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An influential member of parliament has not only to pay much money to become such, and to give time and labour, he has also to sacrifice his mind too - at least all the characteristics part of it that which is original and most his own.
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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.
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