Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
Walter BagehotRead
It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Virtue is important, but facing challenges and temptations is essential for growth.
This quote suggests that while it is commendable to live without vices or negative habits, it is equally important to encounter temptations or challenges. Without temptations, one cannot truly understand their own strength and capacity for self-control, as growth often comes from overcoming obstacles and making choices in difficult situations.
Themes
TemptationVicesGrowthChallengesWisdom
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about personal development, this quote could emphasize the importance of facing challenges.
More from Walter Bagehot
All quotes βWar both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valor, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.
Walter BagehotRead
Efficiency in an assembly requires a solid mass of steady votes; and these are collected by a deferential attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles that those men represent, and they are maintained by fear of those men - by the fear that if you vote against them, you may soon yourself have no vote at all.
Walter BagehotRead
Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
Walter BagehotRead
The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm.
Walter BagehotRead
Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone: but what we have requires no proof.
Walter BagehotRead
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