Walter Bagehot: “There is a cynical doctrine that most men would rather be accused of wickedness than of gaucherie.”

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.

At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.

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.