Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Walter Bagehot

English Economist, Critic, Businessman, Essayist, Social Darwinist and Journalist who wrote extensively about Literature, Government and Economic Affairs

"What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind."

"Whatever expenditure is sanctioned - even when it is sanctioned against the ministry's wish - the ministry must find the money. Accordingly, they have the strongest motive to oppose extra outlay.... The ministry is (so to speak) the breadwinner of the political family, and has to meet the cost of philanthropy and glory; just as the head of a family has to pay for the charities of his wife and the toilette of his daughters."

"When great questions end, little parties begin."

"Woman absent is woman dead."

"Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders."

"You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor... Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits."