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The great pleasure of life is doing for pleasure things I do not like to do.

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
Things
Life
Like
Pleasure
Great

More quotes by Walter Bagehot

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A great 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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I'm not the kind of writer who's able to block out the world around me. I'm mindful of our own haves and have-nots, how our culture often blames and punishes the have-nots. I worry about our precarious economic and political climate.
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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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Efficiency in an assembly requires a solid mass of steady votes and these are collected by a deferential attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles that those men represent, and they are maintained by fear of those men - by the fear that if you vote against them, you may soon yourself have no vote at all.
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A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
Walter Bagehot
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Adventure is the life of commerce, but caution is the life of banking.
Walter Bagehot
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So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
Walter Bagehot
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Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.
Walter Bagehot
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The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards
Walter Bagehot
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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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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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It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition' that it was the first government which made a criticism of administration as much a part of the polity as administration itself. This critical opposition is the consequence of cabinet government.
Walter Bagehot
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The real essence of work is concentrated energy - people who really have that in a superior degree by nature are independent of the forms and habits and artifices by which less able and less active people are kept up to their labors.
Walter Bagehot
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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.
Walter Bagehot
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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.
Walter Bagehot
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The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.
Walter Bagehot
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One cannot make men good by Act of Parliament.
Walter Bagehot
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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.
Walter Bagehot
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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.
Walter Bagehot