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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.

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
Used
Intellectual
Much
Habit
Circumstances
Kind
Results
Null
Would
Quite
Sleepy
Men
Sleep
Voluntary
Small
Active
Part
Moved

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An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.
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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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Nine tenths of modern science is in this respect the same: it is the produce of men whom their contemporaries thought dreamers - who were laughed at for caring for what did not concern them - who, as the proverb went, 'walked into a well from looking at the stars' - who were believed to be useless, if anyone could be such.
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The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.
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The great pleasure of life is doing for pleasure things I do not like to do.
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Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.
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A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.
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A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.
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A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
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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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An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.
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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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It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition'.
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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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Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.
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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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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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Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
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A political country is like an American forest you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.
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