Top 498 Quotes & Sayings by Edmund Burke - Page 8

There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

The men of England,- the men, I mean, of light and leading in England.

Contempt is not a thing to be despised.

Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.

True humility-the basis of the Christian system-is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues.

No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

The ocean is an object of no small terror.

Contempt is not a thing to be despised. It may be borne with a calm and equal mind, but no man, by lifting his head high, can pretend that he does not perceive the scorns that are poured down on him from above.

In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.

Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets.

Between craft and credulity, the voice of reason is stifled.

The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.

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.

I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the subject as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

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.

Water and oil, simply considered, are capable of giving some pleasure to the taste. Water, when simple, is insipid, inodorous, colorless, and smooth; it is found, when not cold, to be a great resolver of spasms, and lubricator of the fibres; this power it probably owes to its smoothness.

Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world.

In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them.

Liberty, without wisdom, is license.

Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulations of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure, and it infinitely abates the evils of vice.

I decline the election. It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.

Over-taxation cost England her colonies of North America.

Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.

My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron.

There is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.

Nothing less will content me, than wholeAmerica.

Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.

Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit.

It is by bribing, not so often by being bribed, that wicked politicians bring ruin on mankind. Avarice is a rival to the pursuits of many.

Sallust is indisputably one of the best historians among the Romans, both for the purity of his language and the elegance of his style.

The same sun which gilds all nature, and exhilarates the whole creation, does not shine upon disappointed ambition.

That cardinal virtue, temperance.

The pride of men will not often suffer reason to have scope until it can be no longer of service.

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.

It is undoubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical,--but, in general, those who are habitually employed in finding and displaying faults are unqualified for the work of reformation.

I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please.

Is it in destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than equal to that task.

Teach me, O lark! with thee to greatly rise, to exalt my soul and lift it to the skies.

The introduction of Christianity, which, under whatever form, always confers such inestimable benefits on mankind, soon made a sensible change in these rude and fierce manners.

A thing may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice; a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in practice excellent.

Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order.

Our manners, our civilization, and all the good things connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.

By looking into physical causes our minds are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose the game, the chase is certainly of service.

Flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not.

A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.

Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all it combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things.

The moment that government appears at market, the principles of the market will be subverted.

Futurity is the great concern of mankind.

Curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied, and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness and anxiety.

They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the rights of man.

Men are as much blinded by the extremes of misery as by the extremes of prosperity.

The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.

Delusion and weakness produce not one mischief the less, because they are universal.

Education is a nation's cheapest defence