Quotes
Quotes - Burke
The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone.
That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.
Vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.
Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.
Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.
In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function.
The men of England,--the men, I mean, of light and leading in England.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.
You can never plan the future by the past.
The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.
And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.
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.
Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets.
It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration.
He was not merely a chip of the old block, but the old block itself.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
