Walter Bagehot: “Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger.”

If those persons be people of different temperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an almost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be done with excessive rapidity.

But, above all things, they were frightened of 'the world;' the spectacle of nature filled them with awe and dread.

And again, in political matters, how quickly a leading statesman can change the tone of the community!

In early society, originality in life was forbidden and repressed by the fixed rule of life.