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The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm.

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
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Human
Melancholy
Humans
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Good
Mankind
Perhaps
Question
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Benevolence

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The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.
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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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Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
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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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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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The purse strings tie us to our kind.
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Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone: but what we have requires no proof.
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Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence it has not the ballot-box before it its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.
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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 great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
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A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
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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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The business of banking ought to be simple. If it is hard it is wrong. The only securities which a banker, using money that he may be asked at short notice to repay, ought to touch, are those which are easily saleable and easily intelligible.
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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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A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.
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The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.
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The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.
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We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.
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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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