Walter Bagehot

But if you tell me that there is in some citizen a hidden charm by which his words become better than my words, and his house better than my house, I do not follow you, and should be pleased if you will explain yourself.

And even if a head of society were a natural idea, it certainly would not follow that the head of the civil Government should be that head.

Society as such has no more to do with civil polity than with ecclesiastical.

The organisation of men and women for the purpose of amusement is not necessarily identical with their organisation for political purposes, any more than with their organisation for religious purposes; it has of itself no more to do with…

The faculties which fit a man to be a great ruler are not those of society; some great rulers have been unintelligible like Cromwell, or brusque like Napoleon, or coarse and barbarous like Sir Robert Walpole.

The light nothings of the drawing-room and the grave things of office are as different from one another as two human occupations can be.

There is no naturalness in uniting the two; the end of it always is, that you put a man at the head of society who very likely is remarkable for social defects, and is not eminent for social merits.

It has not been sufficiently remarked that a change has taken place in the structure of our society exactly analogous to the change in our polity.

A Republic has insinuated itself beneath the folds of a Monarchy.

He did not contribute good morality to society, but he set an example of infinite agreeableness.

Daily imitation is far oftenest a conservative force, for the most frequent models are ancient.

We may wish, if we please, that to-morrow shall be like to-day, but it will not be like it.

New forces will impinge upon us; new wind, new rain, and the light of another sun; and we must alter to meet them.

The imitative impulse tends to this, because men most easily imitate what their minds are best prepared for,--what is like the old, yet with the inevitable minimum of alteration; what throws them least out of the old path, and puzzles…

The doctrine of development means this,--that in unavoidable changes men like the new doctrine which is most of a 'preservative addition' to their old doctrines.

The imitative and the persecuting tendencies make all change in early nations a kind of selective conservatism, for the most part keeping what is old, but annexing some new but like practice--an additional turret in the old style.

Like the old head-dress of mountain villages, they make the traveller think not so much whether they are good or whether they are bad, as wonder how any one could have come to think of them; to regard them as 'monstrosities,' which only…

But in fact such manners are the growth of ages, like Roman law or the British constitution.

Savages PET their favourite habits, so to say, and preserve them as they do their favourite animals; ages are required, but at last a national character is formed by the confluence of congenial attractions and accordant detestations.

In early states of civilisation there is a great mortality of infant life, and this is a kind of selection in itself--the child most fit to be a good Spartan is most likely to survive a Spartan childhood.

The habits of the tribe are enforced on the child; if he is able to catch and copy them he lives; if he cannot he dies.

The imitation which assimilates early nations continues through life, but it begins with suitable forms and acts on picked specimens.

Even so, I think there will be a disinclination to attribute so marked, fixed, almost physical a thing as national character to causes so evanescent as the imitation of appreciated habit and the persecution of detested habit.

But, after all, national character is but a name for a collection of habits more or less universal.

And this imitation and this persecution in long generations have vast physical effects.