Edmund Burke Quotes
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Vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.
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Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
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Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
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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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The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.
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When we speak of the commerce with our American colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
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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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Beauty is the promise of happiness.
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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 government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
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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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I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
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Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
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By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
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Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
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Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
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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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If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
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He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
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When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
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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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The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.
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To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.