Edmund Burke Quotes
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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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Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.
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Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.
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Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
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Illustrious predecessor.
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He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
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Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.
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The men of England - the men, I mean of light and leading in England.
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The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.
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To innovate is not to reform.
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Corrupt influence, which is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder; which loads us, more than millions of debt; which takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.
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In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.
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It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.
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Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property.
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When Croft's 'Life of Dr. Young' was spoken of as a good imitation of Dr. Johnson's style, 'No, no,' said he, 'it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak, without its strength; it has all the contortions of the sibyl, without the inspiration.'
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A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
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The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
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There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
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A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.
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All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
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It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.
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It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
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It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you both your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.
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Good order is the foundation of all things.