Quote

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

Edmund Burke

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edmund Burke
Age: 68 †
Born: 1729
Born: January 12
Died: 1797
Died: July 9
Philosopher
Politician
Statesman
Writer
Dublin city
Existence
Art
Nothing
Lending
Borrowing
Shadows
Shadow
Poetry

More quotes by Edmund Burke

Image
The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it.
Edmund Burke
Image
The marketplace obliges men, whether they will or not, in pursuing their own selfish interests, to connect the general good with their own individual success.
Edmund Burke
Image
I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people.
Edmund Burke
Image
The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.
Edmund Burke
Image
Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part.
Edmund Burke
Image
Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.
Edmund Burke
Image
In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
Edmund Burke
Image
There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity.
Edmund Burke
Image
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.
Edmund Burke
Image
When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators the instruments, not the guides, of the people.
Edmund Burke
Image
What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!
Edmund Burke
Image
He was not merely a chip off the old block, but the old block itself.
Edmund Burke
Image
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.
Edmund Burke
Image
A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends?
Edmund Burke
Image
It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.
Edmund Burke
Image
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
Edmund Burke
Image
Art is a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are dead and those who are yet to be born.
Edmund Burke
Image
History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.
Edmund Burke
Image
Custom reconciles us to everything.
Edmund Burke
Image
No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
Edmund Burke