Life is a school of probability.
Walter Bagehot

Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
Walter Bagehot

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
Walter Bagehot

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
Walter Bagehot

Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
Walter Bagehot

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

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
Walter Bagehot

Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
Walter Bagehot

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.
Walter Bagehot

So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.
Walter Bagehot

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
Walter Bagehot

The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
Walter Bagehot

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.
Walter Bagehot

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.
Walter Bagehot

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

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

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

The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.
Walter Bagehot

The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
Walter Bagehot

The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.
Walter Bagehot