Edmund Burke Quotes
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Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.
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A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
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The march of the human mind is slow.
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Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.
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Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
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A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
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Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
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Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.
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There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs.
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The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.
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Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
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If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.
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But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
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All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
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Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
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If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.
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All protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.
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If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
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Beauty is the promise of happiness.
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Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
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Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
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Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
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Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.
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To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.