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To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

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
Business
Given
Men
Love
Taxation
Taxes
Please
Wise
Politics

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Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.
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It is the love of the people it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army 168 and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.
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Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.
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Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.
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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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A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
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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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Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
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One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
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Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves.
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It is by imitation, far more than by precept, that we learn everything and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly.
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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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As mankind becomes more enlightened to know their real interests, they will esteem the value of agriculture they will find it in their natural--their destined occupation.
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The great inlet by which a colour for oppression has entered into the world is by one man's pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another.
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Man is by his constitution a religious animal atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts.
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But whoever is a genuine follower of Truth, keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader.
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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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It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observations of time and place and of decency in general, that what is called taste by way of distinction consists and which is in reality no other than a more refined judgment.
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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.
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There are three estates in Parliament but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times.
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