It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations. – Walter Bagehot
A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it. – Walter Bagehot
So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism – despotism during the campaign – is indispensable. – Walter Bagehot
An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle. – Walter Bagehot
We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 1872