Walter Bagehot: “The fixed custom which public opinion alone tolerates is imposed on all minds, whether it suits them or not.”

I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.

The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.

Political philosophy is still more imperfect; it has been framed from observations taken upon regular specimens of politics and States; as to these its teaching is most valuable.

Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner.