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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.

Edmund Burke

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Edmund Burke
Age: 68 †
Born: 1729
Born: January 12
Died: 1797
Died: July 9
Philosopher
Politician
Statesman
Writer
Dublin city
Reason
Lawyer
Tells
Ought
Humanity
Justice
Law
Tell
May

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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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The truly sublime is always easy, and always natural.
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Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order.
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Continue to instruct the world and - whilst we carry on a poor unequal conflict with the passions and prejudices of our day, perhaps with no better weapons than other passions and prejudices of our own - convey wisdom to future generations.
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If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.
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There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects and terrible the latter on small ones and pleasing we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us: in one case we are forced, in the other, we are flattered, into compliance.
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Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
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The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them.
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But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
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In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters,--that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion on them. This it is that fills countries with men of ability in all stations.
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Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover.
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It is by sympathy we enter into the concerns of others, that we are moved as they are moved, and are never suffered to be indifferent spectators of almost anything which men can do or suffer. For sympathy may be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as he is affected.
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The traveller has reached the end of the journey!
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It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
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To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.
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History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.
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Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.
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There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations.
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It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.
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In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.
Edmund Burke