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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
Lending
Borrowing
Shadows
Shadow
Poetry
Existence
Art
Nothing

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind.
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The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of his wisdom who made it.
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Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
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Crimes lead into one another. They who are capable of being forgers, are capable of being incendiaries.
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The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!
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There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused.
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Never, no never, did Nature say one thing, and wisdom another.
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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.
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Vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.
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Society is indeed a contract. ... It is a partnership in all science a partnership in all art a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.
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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 greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
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It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
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Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
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It may be observed, that very polished languages, and such as are praised for their superior clearness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in strength.
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Curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections it changes its object perpetually it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied, and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness and anxiety.
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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.
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Parliament is a deliberate assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole where, not local purpose, not local prejudices ought to guide but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.
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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.
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Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.
Edmund Burke