Quotes
Quotes - Burke
The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
"War," says Machiavel, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.
I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.
Custom reconciles us to everything.
There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
The wisdom of our ancestors.
Illustrious predecessor.
In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed and the boldest staggered.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.
The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.
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.
Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
A wise and salutary neglect.
My vigour relents,--I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
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.
I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.
The march of the human mind is slow.
All government,--indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act,--is founded on compromise and barter.
The worthy gentleman who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.
They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.
It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,--glittering like the morning star full of life and splendour and joy.... Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men,--in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded.
