Edmund Burke Quotes
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One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
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We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
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Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.
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Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.
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He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
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The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
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Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.
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Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.
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Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
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Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
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To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
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No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
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All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.
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All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.
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The traveller has reached the end of the journey!
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He was not merely a chip of the old Block, but the old Block itself.
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To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
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Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.
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Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
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Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property.
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Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to any thing but power for their relief.
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The men of England - the men, I mean of light and leading in England.
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Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.