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The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.

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
Looks
Cure
Cures
Observation
Politics
Lord
Unfriendly
House
Lords
Political
Admiring
Look
Parliament

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A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
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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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In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious.
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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 essence of Toryism is enjoyment?but as far as communicating and establishing your creed are concernedtrya little pleasure. The way to keep up old customs is, to enjoy old customs the way to be satisfied with the present state of things is, to enjoy that state of things.
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Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
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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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What we opprobriously call stupidity, though not an enlivening quality in common society, is nature's favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion.
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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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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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Credit means that a certain confidence is given, and a certain trust reposed. Is that trust justified? And is that confidence wise? These are the cardinal questions. To put it more simply credit is a set of promises to pay will those promises be kept?
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In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.
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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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Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
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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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The purse strings tie us to our kind.
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Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
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All people are most credulous when they are most happy.
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The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
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