Walter Bagehot: “We throw aside too much, in making up our images of eras, that which is common to all eras.”

Perhaps such powers as these are what a wise man would most seek to exercise and least fear to possess.

Savages waste away before modern civilisation; they seem to have held their ground before the ancient.

The whole history of civilisation, is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.

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