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

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
Shadow
Poetry
Existence
Art
Nothing
Lending
Borrowing
Shadows

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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Liberty, without wisdom, is license.
Edmund Burke
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Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
Edmund Burke
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History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.
Edmund Burke
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Oppression makes wise men mad but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.
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The true way to mourn the dead is to take care of the living who belong to them.
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True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.
Edmund Burke
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It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin and about as valuable.
Edmund Burke
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For as wealth is power, so all power will infallibly draw wealth to itself by some means or other and when men are left no way of ascertaining their profits but by their means of obtaining them, those means will be increased to infinity.
Edmund Burke
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War is the matter which fills all history and consequently the only, or almost the only, view in which we can see the external of political society is in a hostile shape: and the only actions to which we have always seen, and still see, all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one another.
Edmund Burke
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In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
Edmund Burke
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Nothing so effectually deadens the taste of the sublime as that which is light and radiant.
Edmund Burke
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There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity.
Edmund Burke
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Good company, lively conversation, and the endearments of friendship fill the mind with great pleasure.
Edmund Burke
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All the forces of darkness need to succeed ... is for the people to do nothing.
Edmund Burke
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Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
Edmund Burke
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A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.
Edmund Burke
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Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever
Edmund Burke
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The great difference between the real leader and the pretender is that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present the one lives by the day, and acts upon expediency the other acts on enduring principles and for the immortality.
Edmund Burke
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Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.
Edmund Burke
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Whenever government abandons law, it proclaims anarchy.
Edmund Burke