Quotes by Walter Bagehot

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

Public opinion... requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.

An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.

Business is really more agreeable than pleasure: it interests the whole mind . . . but it does not look as if it did.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

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.

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

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.