Walter Bagehot: “In early society, originality in life was forbidden and repressed by the fixed rule of life.”

No doubt this momentary gain is bought at a ruinous after-cost.

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

He gave an excellent moral example to his contemporaries, but he is an instance of those whose good dies with them, while their evil lives after them.

I do not think I put this too high when I say that a most important if not the most important object of early legislation was the enforcement of LUCKY rites.