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The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.

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
Certain
Leaves
Best
Shadow
Like
Rest
Greatest
Rembrandt
Causes
Selected
History
Vivid
Art
Unseen
Light
Casts

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No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
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The caucus is a sort of representative meeting which sits voting and voting till they have cut out all the known men against whom much is to be said, and agreed on some unknown man against whom there is nothing known, and therefore nothing to be alleged.
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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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It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.
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Life is not a set campaign, but an irregular work, and the main forces in it are not overt resolutions, but latent and half-involuntary promptings.
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Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of its excellence, an indication of its success.
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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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The cardinal maxim is, that any aid to a present bad Bank is the surest mode of preventing the establishment of a future good Bank.
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A highly developed moral nature joined to an undeveloped intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit of human nature a good bit, of course, but a bit only in disproportionate, unnatural and revolting prominence.
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It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition'.
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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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Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
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We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
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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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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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Most men of business think Anyhow this system will probably last my time. It has gone on a long time, and is likely to go on still.
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But of all nations in the world the English are perhaps the least a nation of pure philosophers.
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The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economized by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.
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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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Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
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