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We must not let daylight in upon the magic.

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
Daylight
Magic
Upon
Must

More quotes by Walter Bagehot

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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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When great questions end, little parties begin.
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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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A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
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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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A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
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The characteristic danger of great nations, like the Romans or the English which have a long history of continuous creation, is that they may at last fail from not comprehending the great institutions which they have created
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The characteristic merit of the English constitutions is, that its dignified parts are very complicated and somewhat imposing, very old and rather venerable, while its efficient part, at least when in great and critical action, is decidedly simple and modern.
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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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The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
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Civilized ages inherit the human nature which was victorious in barbarous ages, and that nature is, in many respects, not at all suited to civilized circumstances.
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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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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.
Walter Bagehot
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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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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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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.
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All people are most credulous when they are most happy.
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Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.
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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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Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
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