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People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

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
Memories
Backward
Family
Ancestors
History
Posterity
Inspirational
Ancestor
Look
Backwards
Looks
Historian
Never
Temper
Genealogy
People
Forward
Ancestry

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As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast—alternately tempestuous and serene—so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.
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Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.
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The greatest crimes do not arise from a want of feeling for others but from an over-sensibilit y for ourselves and an over-indulgence to our own desires
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It is undoubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical,--but, in general, those who are habitually employed in finding and displaying faults are unqualified for the work of reformation.
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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.
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If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.
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I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
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Guilt was never a rational thing it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion.
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An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
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The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great.
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What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!
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Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.
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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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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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And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
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An appearance of delicacy, and even fragility, is almost essential to beauty.
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When slavery is established in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom.
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Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
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The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him he indulges it, he loves it but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.
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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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